Seema Sonkiya: Project Quality Important Notes

This article is based on PMBOK4 and also includes some incorporation from ITIL v3 standard in the definition of Quality. Here my emphasis is only to define Quality definition in detail and to provide detailed interpretation of definitions of Plan Quality, Perform Quality Control and Perform Quality Assurance and defining relationships between all of three quality processes. I used definition of deliverable completeness from AGILE

What is Quality?  PMBOK4 says that Quality is “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill the requirements. It can be also defined “fitness for use” or “conformance to requirements” All of these definitions pointing a very important item that quality is defined for the requirements that have been identified. If requirement is not defined then on what basis quality will be defined? We can observe easily that scope baseline (scope statement, WBS and WBS dictionary) is critical input for defining quality.  Requirement gathering effort and the project scope statement is very important to the quality management effort.

Quality is “Fitness for use” because when a product, service and result are developed then there is always a purpose to develop it; we define it “Fitness for purpose”. Fitness for purpose means functionality offered by product / service as the customer views it, it is what the customer gets and it increase performance average. Fitness for purpose is the utility function.

Now Fitness for use means, it is a promise that product service or result will meet the agreed requirements (note the term agreed), whatever customer gets, how it is delivered and it reduce the performance variation. It is Warranty function means it answers the questions like whether service, product or result is available enough? , capable enough? , continuous enough? Or secure enough?

For example Fitness for purpose for a refrigerator is to provide cooling but if it is giving shock then it is not fit for use even though capable enough to provide cooling.

If a website is developed with all the functions but user cannot use it in peak hours due to heavy user load then it is not fit for use.

So Quality is clearly conformance to requirements means whatever we have agreed for the requirements, fit for use and continue to receive utility even if degraded through major disruptions and ensure security for value creating potential of product, service and result.

A product, service or result delivered value to project stakeholders either directly or indirectly and this value is AND functions of both Fitness for purpose and Fitness for use.

If requirement is incorrectly defined then we cannot say that product has poor quality, quality is not disagreement to requirements it is the conformance to requirements. For example if a project is not identified legal requirements applicable for the project then it is not poor quality, it is poor requirement definition.

Quality is defined for project and product, service and result.  For example product quality can be defined as meeting customer requirement by less or no overworking the project team (how customer requirements delivered). Project quality can be defined for example meeting project schedule without excluding planned inspections (how we met the project schedule). So Quality is not just what we get (Fitness for purpose) it is also how we get (how it is delivered).

Quality is also defined as “Zero Defect” because Zero Defect can be viewed as conformance to requirements.

A product, service or result should satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken, mature organizations document the organization way of doing business using quality management which determine the policies, objectives and responsibilities. 

Project quality standard means project processes and product goals, project process are tailored for the specific need of the project. Most of the organizations include customer satisfaction in Quality Policy and Objectives because customer satisfaction is defined as understanding, evaluating, defining and managing expectations (PMBOK4 page no 190) so that customer requirements are met. 

We can observe easily that quality management efforts is direct proportionate with project and product requirements, schedule performance requirements and cost performance requirements as well as threats and opportunities that can impact project and product quality.

PMBOK4 defines 3 Processes for Quality Management:

1.       Plan Quality: Identify quality requirements and/or standards for the project and product. So Plan Quality is all about:

a.       To identify project and product quality requirement.

                                                               i.      We need scope baseline which includes acceptance criteria (processes and criteria) for each identified project and product requirement. WBS is used as input to identify quality both at macro and micro level. It includes the entire project and product deliverables, work packages and control accounts. Quality requirement identified for each components of WBS both at macro and micro level. WBS dictionary defines technical information of the WBS elements.

                                                             ii.      Schedule performance is also important, a project schedule includes planned start and finish dates of project activities, while determining schedule activities LOE and AE are very important to identify and define how schedule is achieved.  For more information about LOE and AE please refer: http://seema-sonkiya.blogspot.in/2012/03/project-schedule-development-important.html

                                                            iii.      Cost performance is also important to identify, if we have achieved project and product scope including schedule performance but we are over budget then quality is not achieved. Cost baseline gives time phase spending plan to identify how much fund is needed at what time. Cost of quality should not be too much compared to benefits. Cost benefit analysis is performed to ensure that we are not spending too much compared to benefits that we achieved.

                                                           iv.      In addition stakeholders are involved to identify quality requirements and risk register is reviewed to identify opportunities and threat that can impact quality.

b.      To Identify Standard that include  processes and product goals, most of the organizations follow quality management methodologies like CMMI, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma to define processes to define quality standards.

Note: Here my emphasis is to define: what is Plan Quality, not to describe tools to achieve it.  

2.     Perform Quality Control: Whenever a deliverable is completed it is submitted to quality control process, Main emphasis of Quality Control is to determine causes of poor process and product quality. For example testing and inspection by Quality control is recorded and documented to identify causes of poor work, these documented results are called Quality Control Measurements which is key input of Quality Assurance. I will explain in more detail Quality Control Measurements in Quality Assurance section.  Quality Control mainly determines correctness of deliverables and these validated deliverables is sent to Verify Scope process to formalize acceptance of Customer and/or Sponsor. Quality Control also determines timely implementation of approved changes. So three main objectives of Quality Control:

a.      Causes of Poor process and product quality and result in documented results, known as Quality Control Measurements.

b.      Determine correctness of deliverables, result in validated deliverables.

c.      Determine timely implementation of approved changes and result in validated changes.

Notes:

a.      definition of complete is very important, SCRUM agile methodology emphasis the definition of complete, we define completed deliverable when each team member completed quality test of his/her work(i.e. unit testing as per defined test cases, in agile test cases defined prior to coding). Each team member should be aware of quality specific to his/her assigned work. Only after completion of work as per defined definition, it is submitted to quality control process.

b.      To perform all of these tasks quality control uses quality metrics and quality checklist as a key input, both are key output of Plan Quality process. Quality metrics and checklists are identified to determine correctness of project results which includes deliverables and project management results, such cost and schedule performance. In addition work performance measurements which provide information about planned versus actual technical performance (output of control scope), planned versus actual schedule performance (output of control schedule) and planned versus actual cost performance (output of cost control) and approved change requests are also used as input to perform all of these three major tasks.

3.       Perform Quality Assurance: Purpose of Quality assurance is to determine whether appropriate operational definitions and quality standards are used.

a.      Quality assurance process identify areas where to improve mainly with the help of quality control measurements. Quality Assurance performs detailed analysis of Quality Control Measurements to analyze and evaluate the quality standard and processes.

For example if Pareto Chart is  used as a tool in Quality Control which is bar chart to show how many problems occurred for each cause and arranging them according to the frequency  at which the problems occurred. Example of recorded could be causes:

                                                               i.      Incomplete or erroneous specification (IES)

                                                             ii.      Misinterpretation of customer communication (MCC)

                                                            iii.      Intentional deviation from specifications (IDS)

                                                           iv.      Violations of programming standards. (VPS)

                                                            v.      Error in data representations (EDR)

                                                           vi.      Inconsistent component interface (ICI)

                                                         vii.      Error in design logic (EDL)

                                                        viii.      Incomplete or erroneous testing (IET)

                                                            ix.      Inaccurate or inconsistent documentation (IID)

                                                             x.      Error in programming language translation of design (PLT)

                                                            xi.      Ambiguous or inconsistent human/computer interface (HCI)

                                                          xii.      Miscellaneous (MIS)

These results are analyzed by Quality Assurance process which analyze the pareto chart to identify improvement area using determinations of Vital few, for example suppose IES, MCC and EDR are vital few causes that account for more than 50% of all errors, however that IES, EDR, PLT and EDL would be selected as the vital few if serious errors are considered. Once the vital few are determined the quality assurance team can begin corrective action, for example to correct MCC, the project manager might identify process improvement in “Collect Requirement” process, and process analysis of “Collect Requirement” may be performed to improve the quality of customer and other stakeholder communication and specifications.

It is important to note that corrective actions focuses primarily on the vital fews, As vital few corrected new candidates pop to the top of the stack. So we should spend our time focusing on things that really matter, but first be sure that we understand what really matters!

Here I used pareto chart tool as an example to explain the relationship between Quality Control and Quality Assurance. There are more other tools that can be used in these processes.

b.      Quality Assurance determines whether we are using correct processes means validate quality standards which are identified in Plan Quality. Process analysis is important tool to perform it.

c.      Quality Audit is also an important tool in quality assurance to identify all good/best practice being implemented, shortcomings, proactively offer assistance to improve implementation of processes.

d.      Quality assurance is an umbrella for continuous improvements as we observed in aforesaid pareto chart example.

In short plan quality define quality management plan which explain that how Project Manager will implement Quality Policy and identify Quality Assurance and Quality Control    approaches. Quality requirements and standards are identified in Plan Quality and Quality Assurance ensures that we are using these standards and we are successful in meeting quality requirements after analyzing quality control measurements and process definitions, in addition identify improvements in standard and quality requirements that’s is basis of continuous improvements. It use outcomes of Quality Control process which is documented results of causes of poor process and product quality and also performs process analysis to identify improvements.

As we observe that as Quality Assurance use documented results of Quality Control, it means this process use all of the tool of Plan Quality and Perform Quality Control because Plan Quality set up and define all the tool and Quality Control use these tools to identify causes and Quality Assurance use these results to identify improvements. For example control chart is set up in Plan Quality and Quality Control is performed in which actual appropriate data is collected and analyzed to indicate quality status of the project processes and products. These results are analyzed by Quality Assurance.

Seema Sonkiya