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Chapter 1
The Concept and Nature of Project Quality
Management
Contents
1.1. What is Quality
1.2. Three Key Quality Management Concepts
1.3. Quality Management for Projects
1.4. Features of Quality Management
1.5. The Purpose of Management of Quality
1.6. Key Processes of Project Quality Management

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What is Quality?
Discuss!

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 Quality
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Quality is “fitness for use: ensuring a product can be
used as it was intended”
(Joseph Juran)
Quality is “conformance to requirements: meeting
written specifications
(Philip B. Crosby)
Quality of a product or services is its ability to satisfy
the needs and expectations of the customer

Quality is a Journey, not a Destination04/14/2024

 Definition of Quality?: But what does "quality" really mean?

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 At its most basic level, quality means meeting the needs of
customers. This is also known as "fit for use."
 As per Joseph Juran, Quality has two meanings:
1. Features of products which meet customer needs and thereby provide
customer satisfaction.”
 Quality improvement related to features usually costs more.
2. Quality also means “freedom from deficiencies.” These deficiencies are
errors that require rework (doing something over again) or result in failures
after a product has been delivered to a customer. Such failures may result in
claims, customer dissatisfaction, or terrible consequences to the user. Quality
improvement related to deficiencies usually costs less.
Juran’s view considers products, defects, and customers.
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 The International Organization for Standardization

(ISO) defines quality as the totality of
characteristics of an entity that bear on its
ability to satisfy stated or implied needs

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 The Project Management Institute defines quality as “the degree to which a set
of inherent characteristics fulfil requirements.

 The set of inherent characteristics may be of a product, processes, or system.

 The requirements may be those of customers or stakeholders, an important
group that is ignored at great peril to the success of the project.

 Project managers routinely make trade-offs among the triple constraint(cost,

time and scope) to meet project objectives. A project manager should never,
never, ever trade off quality during project implementation.

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 1.2. Three Key Quality Management Concepts

 As the project manager, there are three key quality

management concepts that will help you deliver a
high quality project...

1. Customer Satisfaction

2. Prevention over Inspection

3. Continuous Improvement
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 1. Customer Satisfaction
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 Customer satisfaction is a key measure of a project's quality.

 It's important to keep in mind that project quality management is
concerned with both the product of the project and the management of
the project.

 If the customer doesn't feel the product produced by the project meets
their needs or if the way the project was run didn't meet their
expectations, then the customer is very likely to consider the project
quality as poor, regardless of what the project manager or team thinks.
 As a result, not only is it important to make sure the project
requirements are met, managing customer expectations is also a critical
activity that you need to handle well for your project to succeed.
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 2. Prevention over Inspection

 The Cost of Quality (COQ) includes money spent during

the project to avoid failures and money spent during and
after the project because of failures.

 These are known as the Cost of Conformance and the Cost

of Nonconformance.

 The cost of preventing mistakes is usually much less than the

cost of correcting them.

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The sources of cost of quality are three: failure,

prevention, and appraisal.
1. Failure
 Failure costs may result from either internal or

external failure.

 The major costs associated with internal failures,

those that occur before a product has been
delivered to a customer, are scrap and rework.
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 Failure....
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At the end of some process, a product may not conform to prescribed

specifications.
1. Scrap: The degree of nonconformance may be so severe that the
product cannot be fixed and must be discarded. Any costs
associated with production to this point are lost. This is scrap.
2. Rework: In some cases, the degree of nonconformance may not be
so severe. A reasonable amount of additional effort may bring the
product into conformance, so the product is re-entered into the
process and any additional work adds to the overall cost of
production. This is rework.
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 External failures, those that occur after a product has been

delivered to a customer, may generate costs for repairs in
accordance with product warranty obligations.

 They may also generate product recalls, which can be far more
expensive. Consider the potential cost of fixing a defective part
during assembly versus recalling 1.2 million automobiles to
replace the defective part. Recall costs are orders of magnitude
higher than repeat costs.

 External failure costs include those associated with complaints

and complaint handling.
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2. Prevention
 Prevention: Prevention costs are fundamentally different from
failure costs.
 These costs are related to things that an organization does rather
than to outcomes of a process.
 Prevention costs begin with planning. One of the greatest errors a
project manager can make is to leap into performance without
sufficient planning.
 Prevention costs include both quality planning and audits, and
process planning and control.

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 Quality planning establishes the quality management

system for the project.

 Quality audits ensure that the system works as intended.

Generally, an audit is a comparison of performance to plan.

 Process planning establishes the steps to be taken to

produce the product of the project.

 Process control ensures that the process performs as expected

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3. Appraisal
 Appraisal costs begin with inspection of incoming supplies.
 The quality of a product is significantly affected by the quality of
materials that go into its production. Supplier evaluations may have
determined that a particular supplier will provide what is needed for a
project, but inspection of actual deliveries is both prudent and essential.
 In-process product inspection is a form of appraisal that ensures
production is following the plan.
 Noted deficiencies may be corrected before the end of the process
when scrap or additional-cost rework are the inevitable results.
 Final product inspection determines conformance of the result of the
complete process.

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 Benefits of Quality

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 The benefits of quality in project performance are many.

1. a quality project and product will yield customer satisfaction.
If you meet or exceed requirements and expectations, customers
will not only accept the results without challenge or ill feeling, but may
come back to you for additional work when the need arises.
2. Reduced costs are another benefit. Quality processes can reduce
waste, improve efficiency, and improve supplies, all things that mean
the project may cost less than planned. As costs go down, profits may
go up or reduced costs may mean more sales to an existing customer
within existing profit margins.
3. better products, better project performance, and lower costs translate
directly into increased competitiveness in an ever-more-global
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market
 Cost of Quality
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Cost of Conformance Cost of Non-conformance

Prevention Costs Internal Failure Costs
 Training  Rework
 Document Processes  Scrap
 Equipment
 Time To Do It Right

Appraisal Costs External Failure Costs

 Testing  Liabilities
 Destructive Testing  Warranty Work
Loss  Lost Business04/14/2024
 Inspections
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 The essence of a quality chain reaction described by W.

Edwards Deming:
 improve quality,
 reduce costs,
 improve productivity,
 capture the market,
 stay in business,
 provide more jobs

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 3. Continuous Improvement

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 Continuous improvement is a concept that exists in all of the major

quality management approaches such as Six Sigma and Total
Quality Management (TQM).
 In fact, it is a key aspect of the last concept, prevention over inspection.
 Continuous improvement is simply the ongoing effort to improve
your products, services, or processes over time.
 These improvements can be small, incremental changes or major,
breakthrough type changes.
 From a project perspective, this concept can be applied by analyzing
the issues that were encountered during the project for any lessons
learned that you can apply to future projects.
 The goal is to avoid repeating the same issues in 04/14/2024
other projects.
 1.3. Quality Management for Projects
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 Quality management is the process for ensuring that all project

activities necessary to design, plan and implement a project are effective
and efficient with respect to the purpose of the objective and its
performance.
 Project quality management (QM) is not a separate, independent process
that occurs at the end of an activity to measure the level of quality of the
output.
 It is not purchasing the most expensive material or services available on
the market.
 Quality and grade are not the same,
 grade are characteristics of a material or service such as additional
features. A product may be of good quality (no defects) and be of low
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grade (few or no extra features).
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 Project Quality Management includes

 the processes and activities of the performing organization
 that determine quality policies, objectives, and
responsibilities
 so that the project will satisfy the NEEDS(time, cost, and
scope, product, customer)for which it was undertaken.

 Project quality management includes the process required to

ensure that the project satisfies the needs for which it is
undertaken.
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 Project Quality Management uses policies and procedures

to implement, within the project’s context, the organization’s
quality management system and, as appropriate, it supports
continuous process improvement activities as undertaken on
behalf of the performing organization.

 Project Quality Management works to ensure that the

project REQUIREMENTS, including product
requirements, are met and validated.

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 PQM includes all the activities of the overall

management function that determine
 the quality policy,
 objectives, and responsibilities and
 implement them within the quality system.

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 Project quality management processes [means of Implementation of PQM]

1. Quality planning,
2. Quality assurance,
3. Quality control(pmbok).

 The juran trilogy describes three slightly different elements:

1. Quality planning
2. Quality control, and
3. Quality improvement.

Juran’s view includes assurance and control activities within quality

control. It also adds the essential element of quality improvement, which
the PMBOK® guide does not include as a distinct process
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 Here, we will combine the best of these two views

to include
 Quality planning,
 Quality assurance,
 Quality control, and
 Quality improvement.

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 1.4. Key Processes of Project Quality Management
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 Project Quality Management has the following key

processes/activities or steps that you should perform in your
projects...
1. Quality Plan
2. Quality Assurance
3. Quality Control
4. Quality Improvements

Managing quality: translating the quality management plan

into executable quality activities

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 Key Processes of Project Quality Management
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1. Plan Quality
 Plan Quality involves identifying the quality requirements for both the project and the
product and documenting how the project can show it is meeting the quality
requirements.

 The PMBOK® Guide defines quality planning as :…identifying which quality standards
are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them; a metric is a standard of
measurement

 The outputs of this process include:

 a Quality Management Plan,
 quality metrics,
 quality checklists and
 a Process Improvement Plan.
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 2. Quality Assurance
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 is evaluating the overall project performance on a regular basis to

provide a confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant quality
standards.
 Quality assurance includes all the activities related to satisfying the
relevant quality standards for a project.
 Quality Assurance is used to verify that the project processes are
sufficient so that if they are being adhered to the project deliverables
will be of good quality.
 Quality assurance evaluating overall project performance on a regular
basis to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant
quality standards.
 Quality assurance evaluating overall project performance to ensure the
project will satisfy the relevant quality standards
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 Another goal is continuous quality improvement

 Kaizen is the Japanese word for improvement or change for
the better
 Lean involves evaluating processes to maximize customer
value while minimizing waste
 Benchmarking generates ideas for quality improvements by
comparing specific project practices or product
characteristics to those of other projects or products within or
outside the performing organization
 A quality audit is a structured review of specific quality
management activities that help identify lessons learned that
could improve performance on current or future projects
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 The methods used for project quality assurance

include:
 Benchmarking ,
 Process checklists
 Quality(project )audits
 The PCDA(Plan, Do, Check, and Act) Cycle

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3. Perform Quality Control

 Quality Control is the monitoring of specific project results to determine if they

comply with the relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of
unsatisfactory performance. to improve overall quality.

 Quality Control verifies that the product meets the quality requirements.
 The results will determine if corrective action is needed.
 The main outputs of quality control are:
1. Acceptance decisions
2. Rework
3. Process adjustments
 Some tools and techniques include:
1. Pareto analysis
2. Statistical sampling
3. Six Sigma
4. Quality control charts
5. Testing 04/14/2024
6. Peer Reviews
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Process Project Key Deliverables

Phase
8.1 Plan Quality Planning Quality Management
Plan, Quality Metrics
Management

8.2 Perform Quality Execution Change Requests

Assurance
8.3 Control Quality Monitoring and Quality control
Controlling
Measurements

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4. QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
 It is the systematic approach to the processes of work that

looks to remove waste, loss, rework, frustration, etc. in

order to make the processes of work more effective,
efficient, and appropriate.
 Here the major issues include:

 Steps of quality improvement

 Cost of Quality
 Leadership
 Maturity Models
 Continuous Improvement
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 P R O JE C T Q U A L ITY M A N A G E M E NT

Q U A L IT P L A N N IN G Q U A L ITY A S S U R A N C E Q U A L ITY C O N TR O L

34 1- INPUTS 1- INPUTS 1- INPUTS

-Quality policy -Quality management plan -work results

-Scope statement -result of quality control -quality management plan

-Product description measurements -Operational definitions

-Standards and regulations -Operational definitions -checklists

-Other process outputs 2- TOOLS AND TECH. 2- TOOLS AND TECH.

-Quality planning tools and -inspection
2- TOOLS AND TECH.
techniques -Control charts
-benefit/ cost analysis
-Quality audits
-Benchmarking -Pareto diagrams
3- OUTPUTS -Statistical sampling
-Flowcharting
-Quality improvement
-Design of experiments -flowcharting
-Trend analysis
3- OUTPUTS
-Quality management plan 3- OUTPUTS
-Operational definitions -Quality improvement

-checklists -Acceptance decisions

-Inputs to other processes -rework

-Completed checklist
-Process adjustment
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 1.4. Features of Quality Management
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1. Quality management is a continuous process that starts and ends with

the project.
Quality management is not an event - it is a process, a consistently high
quality product or service cannot be produced by a defective process.

 Quality management is a repetitive cycle of measuring quality, updating

processes, measuring, updating processes until the desired quality is
achieved.
2. It is more about preventing and avoiding than measuring and fixing
poor quality outputs.

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3. It is part of every project management processes from the

moment the project initiates to the final steps in the project
closure phase. It is not about finding and fixing errors after
the fact, quality management is the continuous monitoring
and application of quality processes in all aspects of the
project.

4. QM focuses on improving stakeholder’s satisfaction

through continuous and incremental improvements to
processes, including removing unnecessary activities; it
achieves that by the continuous improvement of the quality of
material and services provided to the beneficiaries.
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 The central focus of quality management is:

 meeting or exceeding stakeholder’s expectations and
 conforming to the project design and specifications

 The ultimate judge for quality is the beneficiary,

and represents how close the project outputs and
deliverables come to meeting the beneficiaries’
requirements and expectations.

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 How a beneficiary defines quality may be completely

subjective, but there are many ways to make quality
objective; by defining the individual characteristics and
determine one or more metrics that can be collected to
mirror the characteristic.

 For instance, one of the features of a quality product may be

that it has a minimum amount of errors.

 This characteristic can be measured by counting errors and

defects after the product is used.
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 1.5. The Purpose of Management of Quality

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 The main principle of project quality management is to ensure

the project will meet or exceed stakeholder’s Needs And
Expectations.

 The project team must develop a good relationship with key

stakeholders, specially the donor and the beneficiaries of the
project, to understand what quality means to them.

 One of the causes for poor project evaluations is the project

focuses only in meeting the written requirements for the main
outputs and ignores other stakeholder needs and expectations for
the project.
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 Quality must be viewed on an equal level with scope,

schedule and budget.

 If a project donor is not satisfied with the quality of how the

project is delivering the outcomes, the project team will need to
make adjustments to scope, schedule and budget to satisfy the
donor’s needs and expectations.

 To deliver the project scope on time and on budget is not

enough, to achieve stakeholder satisfaction the project must
develop a good working relationship with all stakeholders and
understand their stated or implied needs.
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End of Chapter 1

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