PMI CAPM – Plan, Assure, and Control Project Quality Management for the CAPM Part 2

4. Completing Quality Management Planning

All right, welcome back. We’re going to continue our conversation about quality management planning. Quality management planning We know that planning for quality involves two plans: the quality management plan and the process improvement plan. So let us continue our discussion here. Benchmarking is something that we’ve already talked about, where I compare two systems, two technologies, or two different materials. I can also do benchmarking against two projects. What’s a great way to benchmark projects? Earned Value Management Project A has a CPI of zero 98, and Project C has a CPI of zero 93. So even if they’re in separate disciplines, EVM can allow me to benchmark. The design of experiments is a way to examine variables to determine the best outcomes. And this is my favourite analogy in the whole course. Here’s a little story.

We’re going to do a postcard mailing to a million people, and in this scenario, it’s to come down to Florida. I would love for you all to come down to Florida. You come to Florida, and I’ll meet you at the tiki bar for a frosty beverage, okay? So come down to Florida and let me know. and especially if you’re in my neighbourhood, then we’ll make this happen. So anyway, I designed the experiment, so I want you to come to Florida. We’re going to send out a million postcards across the United States, in Europe, and all over the world.

Why not? So whichever one of these three postcards stands out, that’s going to be the winner. So what I mean by that is that rather than just taking a million of this train postcard and dropping it in the mail and seeing what happens, we’re going to say, “Well, first we’ll do about 100,000 of each one of these postcards.” The little train going through the orange grove, or the yellow train there in the middle, or the street downtown here, this old, tiny street here in Florida So we’ll do 100,000 of each of those in this campaign.

And we’re going to have a little code on the back of these postcards that when people call or visit our website, they can punch in a little code, and that will let us know which postcard they are responding to. So we’ll do 100,000 of A, 100,000 of B, and 100,000 of C. Well, as it turns out, the one in the middle, postcard B, gets the most responses of the three that we send out.

So the remaining 700,000 postcards that we’re going to mail out will all be postcard B. So that’s the design of the experiments. It’s whenever I have multiple choices and I do a small experiment to see which one works the best. If you’ve ever painted the interior or exterior of your home, you may have experimented with a small swatch of paint to get a white, an eggshell white, and more of a butter white, and then you kind of live with it for a few days.

You actually paint a little portion of your wall there, and you look to see once it dries, or once the sun hits it, or how it looks with your lamp on or whatnot. So that’s the design of the experiments. Which one do you like best? That’s the design of the experiments. Some quality planning tools We discussed brainstorming as a way to generate ideas and create an affinity diagram. It’s a logical grouping of ideas. Remember force field analysis, where we had forces for and against our project? We did that with quality as well. And then there is the nominal group technique. Remember the nominal group technique? We do some brainstorming, and then it’s voted on or reviewed by a larger group. So that’s the nominal group technique.

The quality management plan The quality management plan we’re talking about: how will we do quality assurance and quality control? What about continuous process improvement? Any operational definitions that are unique to your business or to your application area? So terminology, metrics, a lexicon or glossary, so that everyone understands the terminology used in your project or application area. The process improvement plan is also created as a result of quality planning.

It identifies process boundaries. Where does one process stop and the next one begin? Process configuration, or process mapping, shows how a process works in your environment. Process metrics: how long does it take to complete a process? How effective are the processes? What are the outcomes? So this allows for process improvement, and then that allows us to set goals and targets for improvement. Now, the process improvement plan is not just for the 47 project management processes; we’re also talking about processes that are unique to your organization. Good job. That wraps up this big talk about quality planning. In the next lecture, we’re going to talk about quality assurance. So I’ll see you in just a moment in quality assurance.

5. Perform Quality Assurance

Let us now discuss how to perform quality assurance. Quality assurance is really about doing the work correctly the first time and ensuring that quality will exist in what we create. So this is from Pinbox 82 to perform quality assurance. It is an audit of the quality requirements to ensure that they are realistic and planned for in the project. But this is an iterative activity.

So it’s also auditing the results of quality control. The idea being that we first set our goals and plan for quality in the project, and then we do quality control, which we’ll talk about next, to inspect the work to ensure that quality exists. So we look to see, “Well, did we pass our quality control?” Was there quality in the things that we delivered? And if so, then quality assurance is working. If not, if we have problems in QC, then we probably have QA problems as well.

It facilitates the improvement of quality processes. QA is prevention-driven. Quality assurance is prevention-driven; we don’t want mistakes to enter the product. It’s being certain about the quality being planned and built into the product. Let’s look at our ethos for performing quality assurance. Our inputs include the quality management plan, the process improvement plan, quality metrics, quality control measurements, project documents, our tools and techniques, and the quality management and control tools. So that’s pretty broad, but it’s talking about those seven basic quality tools. It’s looking at the inspection as a result of quality control, which sets us up for quality audits as one of our tooling techniques. and then process analysis.

How effective are our QA and QC processes and the outputs? You may have change requests because you may have to take corrective action. Project management plan updates, project document updates, and OPA updates Let’s talk about these quality management and control tools. Remember the affinity diagram, which is a process decision programme chart, which is a way of mapping out how processes work and then determining where those decision points are in the program, initiative, or endeavor? some interrelationship diagrams to see how things are tied together or affect one another. Tree diagrams for decision-making, some prioritisation matrices, activity network diagrams, and just matrix diagrams So these are all quality management and control tools. a way of looking for where quality may be breaking down or opportunities for quality to be improved. Now, the big thing here is a quality audit. A quality audit determines if the project complies with organisational policies. You may not be the individual doing the quality audit. You may have a quality department, a third party, or some SME subject matter expert coming in and doing the quality audit.

But it’s looking to see if you are doing best practises in your project, in the execution of the project, and in your application area. If so, what policies are not conforming, or what activities are not conforming to your policies? Are there any shortcomings that you can improve on in how you execute and manage the project and how you build the deliverable? Do you have some good practises to share with others? So you’ve learned something that can be applied in your organisation right away. We don’t want to keep that a secret. We want to apply that to other projects that may already exist. can take advantage of what we’ve learned.

Can you offer assistance to improve your processes? Or can this SME or this consultant offer some assistance based on the results of the quality audit? Can you highlight contributions? So what worked in your project? It’s not all negative. What was good, and what was successful? and you want to repeat that in your projects. And then lessons were learned. What have you learned as a result of doing this quality audit? That brings us to the end of this topic on quality assurance. We have one more process to look at, and that’s quality control. So I’ll see you in just a few minutes in the quality control lecture.

6. Implement Project Quality Control

Our last process to discuss in this section on quality is project quality control. Our goal with quality control is to keep mistakes out of the customer’s hands. Quality control is an inspection-driven activity that we do to find mistakes before we do scope validation because we don’t want the customer to see the mistakes. So we are looking for mistakes, and we’re going to capture those, correct them, and keep them away from customers. And that’s what quality control gives us an opportunity to do. So this is from Pinch Eight Three about control quality. As I mentioned, it’s an inspection-driven activity to keep mistakes out of the customer’s hands.

Part of quality control is looking for a causal identification of poor quality. So we do root cause analysis, and then we want to validate quality because that will lead to customer acceptance when we do scope validation. Let’s take a look at the edo for this quality control process. Our inputs must have something to inspect: the project management plan, quality metrics, quality checklist, work performance data, approved change requests, and actual deliverables. Project documents and OPA tools and techniques Those seven basic quality tools that we looked at back in quality assurance, we can use here in QC as well. Statistical sampling means that if I have a large pool of deliverables, I can take a small sampling to get a general idea of the quality of the pool as a whole. Inspection, of course, is our key to achieving quality.

With quality control and approved change requests, we do a review to assure that approved change requests are not rushed and are done accurately and with quality. There are a lot of outputs here in control: quality control measurements, validated changes, validated deliverables, work performance information, change requests, project management plan updates, project document updates, and OPA updates. So a lot of the information that you need is input, and a lot of things are created as a result of the outputs of QC. The overarching theme for QC is that quality control is inspection-driven.

The overarching quality theme is that it is planned in rather than inspected in. Let’s look at how to do quality control. You have to get out and inspect the deliverables, so your team has to do some execution. And now we’re at the monitoring and control stage, where we’re going to do quality control. You inspect the work that they’ve done, the deliverables, and you’re going to measure the work. Is it accurate? Is it of quality? Does it have fitness for use and conformance to requirements based on the type of work that you’re doing?

You’re going to implement the most appropriate, not necessarily all, but the most appropriate of the seven basic quality tools. If you have a large batch of items, like we’re installing 1000 of those light fixtures, you could do statistical sampling, where you take a percentage of those light fixtures and inspect them for quality. That gives you a general idea of how the rest of those light fixtures are in terms of quality. As a result, quality control is inspection-driven rather than customer-driven. All right, this brings us to the end of this talk on quality control and the end of this section on quality in the pinbox. So I have a little game for you all about quality. So in the next lecture, there’s a link, and you can hop out and do this fun little game. Now, I’ll see you in our next section, where we’re going to go into Chapter 9 of the PINBOX and talk about Project Human Resources. So I’ll see you there. Take care.

7. Section Wrap

Great job. You have completed this section on project quality management and many other important topics. In this section, we’ll begin our conversation by talking about planning quality management, creating the quality management plan, and creating the process improvement plan. As a result of the first process in quality, you get two plans.

Of course, the quality management plan specifies how you will achieve quality, how you will ensure quality, and how you will control quality. We looked at the difference between quality and grade. That quality is achieved by fulfilling requirements and giving people exactly what they need—nothing more and nothing less. The quality is exactly what was needed. Grade is a category of ranking, like first-class versus coach or plywood versus oak. So grading is just a ranking or a technical categorization of materials. quality project management. We have a theme about customer satisfaction and about prevention.

So how does that go? Quality is planned into a project, not inspected into a project. We want to do the work right the first time. As a result, quality is built in. And there’s the management responsibility we talked about. Also, keep the dimming plan in mind. Do check. Act PDCA. And, in some ways, that’s what we do in project management: make a plan, execute it, check it, and, if necessary, go back to planning or move on to the next phase of the project. So, plan, do, and check (PDCA). We looked at standards and regulations. Standards are optional; regulations are not.

Thank you. Everybody’s got that? I know you do. We looked at the cost of quality, the cost of conformance to requirements, versus the cost of non-conformance, sometimes called the cost of quality or the cost of poor quality. And then we talked about the seven basic quality tools: cause-and-effect, low charts, check sheets, parental diagrams, histoid control charts, and scatter diagrams. We looked at benchmarking, and then we talked about the design of experiments. I know you all want to come to Florida now after we did those little design experiments with those different postcards. So come on down here to the Sunshine State. There’s plenty of room. It’s beautiful. It’s nice weather. I’m about ready to finish this course and get outside. I’m sure you are as well.

Anyway, moving on, we also talked about quality assurance. So quality assurance is all about making sure that quality is built in rather than inspected in.

The QA is prevention-driven. We want to do the work right the first time. Our last process in this section was control, driven by quality inspection driven. You’ve got to get out and inspect the work and keep mistakes out of the customer’s hands. What happens before QC? Scope process. What’s that? Scope validation. also inspection-driven, but done with the customer. QC. I want to keep mistakes out of the customer’s hands. Scope validations. want the customer to accept the work. All right, good job. We’ve covered a lot of information here. all the way up to our quality. Let’s go ahead and keep moving forward. I know you want to know. You’re eager to We’ve got another really approachable chapter or section coming up on Project Human Resources Management. So good job. Let’s move forward and knock that out right now.