8. Project Quality Management

Introduction

Project quality management includes the processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken.

It includes "all activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives, and responsibilitiesand implements them by means such as quality planning, quality assurance, and quality improvement, within the quality system." - International Organization for Standardization

Project quality management must address both management of the project and the product of the project.

Quality is defined as,

The totality of the characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs

 

Quality is different from grade in that,

Grade is a category or rank given to entities having the same functional use but different requirements for quality. Low quality is always a problem; low grade may not be.

Both project management and quality management recognize the importance of:

• Customer satisfaction - understanding, managing and influencing needs so that customer expectations are met or exceeded. This requires a combination of conformance to specifications and fitness for use.
• Prevetion over inspection
• Management responsibility - success requires participation of all team members but management must allocate the resources for the team to succeed.
• Processes within phases - the repeated plan-do-check-act cycle described by Deming.

Key process areas

8.1 Quality planning

8.2 Quality Assurance

8.3 Quality Control