Project Management
quality
General Management, Project Management
Introduction and Implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total Quality Management is a management approach that originated in the 1950’s and has steadily become more popular since the early 1980’s. Total Quality is a description of the culture, attitude and organization of a company that strives to provide customers with products and services that satisfy their needs. The culture requires quality in all aspects of the company’s operations, with processes being done right the first time and defects and waste eradicated from operations. …
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PMP Hints
Find Errors as Early as Possible
A Hewlett-Packard executive once noted, “If you catch a two cent resistor before you use it and throw it away, you lose two cents. If you don’t find it until it has been soldered into a computer component, it may cost $10 to repair the part. If you don’t catch the component until it is in the computer . . . the expense may exceed the manufacturing cost.” …
PMP Hints, Project Management
Quality Control and Quality Assurance
You have heard the terms before, but do you really know the difference between quality control and quality assurance? …
PMP Hints
Resolving Quality Problems
Quality problems may not be raised to the level of an issue, but they are problems nonetheless and can be resolved using some of the same problem-solving techniques described in Managing Issues. Guessing the cause of the problem rarely works. A structured approach works much better. You want to not only resolve this particular problem, but you also want to understand the problem well enough so that you can identify the root cause and ensure that this particular quality problem does not occur again. …
PMP Hints
Create Quality Management Plan
The Quality Management Plan describes how you will ensure that the client’s quality requirements are achieved and to describe the processes and activities that will be put into place to ensure that quality deliverables are produced. The Quality Management Plan allows you to understand when the deliverables are complete as well as how to show they are correct. …
PMP Hints
The cost and benefits of quailty
Building quality steps in the schedule adds a certain amount of effort and cost to the project. However, these incremental costs will be rewarded with shorter timelines and reduced costs throughout the life cycle of the solution. Examples of the cost of quality include: …
PMP Hints
Understand the Characteristics of Quality for Your Project
It is hard to define product or service quality at a high level because the term “quality” is nebulous and means different things to different people. You must take the time to define the lower-level characteristics of quality for each specific service or deliverable. If you want to ensure that a service or product meets the customer’s expectations of quality, you have to understand the underlying characteristics of quality. …
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PMP Hints
Stress That Quality is Everyone’s Responsibility
The project manager has overall responsibility for the quality management process. Some projects may also have specific roles for a quality assurance person or for testing experts. However, even if you have specific people who have responsibilities for quality, project quality is not the responsibility of one or two people. It is everyone’s responsibility.All of the team, including the client, has a stake in ensuring that the deliverables produced are of high quality. Everyone is also responsible for surfacing ideas for improvement to the processes used to create the deliverables. …