Quality Management
As discussed in Part I, Part II, and Part II of the Triple Constraints; the project schedule, scope, and budget are all closely intertwined and greatly affect the project quality. Quality can be maintained by ensuring you have scheduled adequate time to complete the project, accurately managing the scope, and correctly managing the budget. Significant details on how to manage the project schedule, scope, and budget have been discussed, Part IV will now take us through managing the project quality.
The quality of every project can be measured by the level of excellence the team strives to maintain, ensuring the client is completely satisfied, and continuing improvements. These are the mutual strategies used to manage the quality of your next project:
Create a Quality Plan
Managing quality begins with having a plan. The main objective of the quality plan is to determine the quality specifications of your project and how those specifications will be measured. The quality plan should include items such as the key deliverables that are to be reviewed, the standards to which the deliverables are to be measured, the responsibility of management, how quality testing will be conducted, stakeholder expectations, and quality assurance activities. More or less items can be added or removed from your quality plan depending on the projects specific qualifications and stakeholder expectations.
Perform Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is the preservation and improvement of the projects anticipated level of quality, often focusing on the process and practices of production. Many large organizations have a QA team that have processes in place to monitor project quality. As the PM, you are required to adhere to the quality assurance practices so the organization is better able to improve the quality of its projects and hence, the quality of its products. If the organization your working for doesn’t have a QA team, you can research the organizational standards or industry standards so you have a guideline to manage the quality of your project.
Implement Quality Control
Quality control is the group of processes and/or tests that evaluate the projects product against the standards set forth in the quality plan and quality assurance models. The key deliverables that were outlined in your Quality Plan will be verified for a satisfactory level of quality. Key stakeholders, especially the client, should input their feedback for analysis. Cost, schedule, and scope will all be included in the results mentioned to ensure quality is reached at all levels and impact the end result in a positive way.
Throughout the Triple Constraint Series, it is quite clear the project scope, schedule, budget, and quality are all closely intertwined and a change to one will also impact the other three. These are the four largest aspects of your project and, as the PM, you should always have a change process in place so you can control them jointly. This way, you always end up with a high quality product that both you and your clients will be proud of.
Please Share #EXCEDELGROUP
