Project Quality

Hi team, today I would like to cover how is project quality measured. Quality is a parameter which normally equates to the successful delivery of a project, within budget and to scope which are just some of the accepted criteria. There are two types of quality which make up almost every project. One is the product quality, which refers to the quality of the deliverable from the project, this being the traditional tools of quality control, such as performance, cost and time. The second relates to the actual project management process itself that is the governance behind managing a project and the tools available to us for successful delivery.  

 

The reference to the identified quality requirements consist of the following, conformity, usability, efficiency, maintainability, response time, flexibility, portability, security, audit-ability and the actual impact to the job itself. Each of these quality attributes has a criteria subset. For example, conformity is a measure of completeness and traceability. It is clear that some of these attributes are potentially incompatible, as security could degrade response time and usability could degrade efficiency.

 

The focus is on how well the project management process works and how it can be improved. Remember we are always looking at ways to better deliver projects, whether it is through the use of standard processes or customer feedback, actually any mechanism available to us to build our success rate. Continuous quality improvement and process quality management are areas we should always look into, as they are the tools used to measure quality process. 

  

A good project manager should attempt to gain a consensus on what quality attributes are required for the project deliverables before planning the project and negotiate a formal quality agreement. Simply put, different quality attributes have different impact on the project estimates. While some attributes such as maintainability and flexibility have relatively low impact, that is, a requirement to make a system maintainable would not add a significant cost to the project – others have a major impact, efficiency, usability, and portability require significant effort to achieve. It is essential that the project manager and team clearly understand the requisite quality requirements before they finalise the project estimates.

 

A sound quality management program with processes in place that monitor the work in a project would be a good investment. Not only does it contribute to the customer satisfaction, it helps you and your organisation use resources more effectively and efficiently by reducing waste and rework. This is one area that should not be compromised. The payoff is a higher probability of successfully completing the project and satisfying the customer.