Quality management

1. Quality management

Quality management plays a vital role in achieving the project success throughout the project development phase. It is crucial like time, cost, and scope constraints as the Project will not be successful without meeting stakeholders’ needs and expectations.  The definition of quality has seen a transformation with time that can be seen by the following definitions of quality:

• British standard defines “quality as the totality of features and characteristics of product, service and process, which bears on its ability to satisfy a given need”.
• Feigenbaum states that quality is “the total composite product and service characteristics of marketing, engineering, manufacturing and maintenance through which the product or service in use will meet expectations of the customer”.
•  Juran (1989) says quality is ‘…fitness for use, as judged by the user’.
•  Crossby (1979 argues quality is ‘… conformance to requirements.’ —

From the above definitions, we can conclude that quality highly depends on meeting customer requirements and achieving customer satisfaction.

2. The quality management process

The quality management process checks the project deliverables to make sure that they are in line with organizational standards and goals.PMBOK (2008) cites three main quality management processes. They are the following:

• Plan Quality – This involves identifying quality requirements for the project and documenting how compliance with these requirements will be demonstrated
• Perform Quality Assurance – Involves auditing the quality requirements and results from quality control measurements to ensure appropriate standards and definitions are used
• Perform Quality Control – Process of recording results of quality activities, monitoring the results to assess performance and recommending necessary changes

Kerzner (2009) says that attitudes toward quality management have changed from inspection to prevention. Nowadays industries are more focusing on preventing the quality issues from occurring in the first instance rather than focusing on rectifying defects through inspection after they have occurred. This new trend leads to a new type of cost called cost f quality.  Pressman (2010) says that identifying issues in early stage of software development projects is a better idea rather than identifying issues in the latter stage of the development cycle.  Pressman (2010) also a state that the cost of rectifying a defect once a piece of software has been released into field operation is 40-1000 times greater than the cost of rectifying it at the start of the project.

3. Cost of quality

Mishra (2005) states that cost of quality are the combination of the following. They are:

1.      Quality control cost (prevention and appraisal)

2.      Cost of failure of quality control (internal and external failures)

Quality costs can be divided into four major categories the first two include the costs to try to control quality and the second two include the costs that result from failure to control quality.

1. Prevention costs: The cost of preventing defective work is usually extended before the product is made or service rendered. These costs include:

 • Design reviews and drawing checks • Quality orientation program, education and training • Process control • Process orientations • Suppliers evaluation and presentation • Workers training

 2. Appraisal costs: The cost of appraisal is incurred for auditing service procedures to make sure they conform to prescribed work practices. These include

• Process capability measurement (e.g. control charts) • Tests, gauges and test equipment • Prototype inspection and tests • in process and final inspection and tests • Checking material furnished by suppliers • Work in process goods testing and inspections.

3. Internal failure cost: Internal failure cost is applicable when the product is in factory and not been sold. These costs include.

 • Expenses for producing items that are scrapped. • Redesign. • Reworking and downtime. • Retesting defective items. • Lost value of items sold as seconds. • Cost of delays. • Administration time to review non • conforming materials for disposition • Scrap

4. External failure costs: These costs are applicable to goods when product has been sold. These cost include.

• Warranty cost. • Product liability (insurance and settlements) • Consumer affairs (dealing primarily with customer complaints about quality). • Field service (mostly repairs of what should have worked).

Network diagram types: Activity On Node (AON) and Activity On Arrow (AOA)

There are many kinds of network diagram, but the classic ones are AON and AOA diagrams.

AOA diagram

AOA diagram is drawn using circles as the nodes , with nodes represents the beginning and ending points of  the arrows or tasks. Arrows act as activities or tasks in AOA diagram. Even though AOA is a good approach to draw a network diagram, it has its own drawbacks too. The following are the drawbacks of AOA network diagram conventions identified by Taylor (2008):

• The AOA network diagram can only show Finish to start relationships. It is not possible to show lead or lag time except by adding or subtracting time . This makes project tracking difficult.
• There are instances where "dummy activities" can occur in AOA diagram. (dummy activities are  activities which does not have duration but simply there to show dependency of one task on other task)
• AOA networks are not supported by many software tools , thus it is not not widely used.

AON diagram

AON network diagram is where circles are used to represent an activity, with arrows linking them together to show the sequence in which they are performed.The following are the advantages  of AON network diagram identified by Taylor (2008):

• AON does not have dummy activities as the arrows represents only dependencies.
• AON can accommodate any types of relationship ( Finish to Start, Finish to Finish, Start to Start, Start to finish, Lead and Lag)
• AON is  widely as it is supported by almost all the project management software tools

Scheduling in project management

Scheduling is one of the most critical activities in project management. Project scheduling involves in separating the total work involved in the project into manageable activities. Project schedules are usually represented as set of charts that includes work breakdown, activities dependencies and staff allocations.  There are two types of tools used to illustrate project schedules. They are bar charts and activity networks.

Bar charts: According to sommerville (2009), Bar charts show who is responsible for each activity and when the activity is schedule to begin and end.  Gantt chart is a bar chart which provides comparative illustration between actual performance and planned performance Gantt chart has been continuously evolved to cope up with the new improvement in project management and techniques. One important modification that forms a link in the evolution of the Gantt chart into PERT/CPM network is called Milestone system. According to Mishra (2005), milestones are key points or events in time that can be identified when completed as the project progresses. They act as reference points for the management.Even though this approach has many advantages, it has its own disadvantages too. They are the following:

•  Bar chart becomes too cumbersome while dealing with complex and big projects when considered in detail and efforts were to find out interaction/ interdependence. 
•  It does not show continuing interrelationship of activities and also it does not tell tolerance in activity times.

The above drawbacks lead to a new scheduling technique called network scheduling. Mishra (2005) says network is a pictorial representation of the inter relationships among all activities in the project. Network activity diagram is drawn after identifying project activities. Next step is to assign expected time duration to the activities. . The expected duration depends on the planned team size work method equipment and working hours. A particular level of resource must be assumed to be available when the work is to be performed.  The following are the advantages of network scheduling identified by Mishra (2005). They are:

• They lead to planning a project to the selected level of details so that all parts of the project and their intended order of accomplishment are known. 
•  They provide a fairly accurate estimate of the length of time it will take to complete the project and the activities that must be kept on time to meet the schedule. 
•  They provide a graphical picture and standardized vocabulary to aid in understanding work assignments and communicating among people involved in the project. 
•  They provide a means to track progress on a project (that is, show where work is with respect to the plan). 
•  They identify and focus attention on potentially troublesome activities to facilitate management by exception. 
•   They provide a means of estimating the time and cost impact of changes in the project

There are two types of network conventions used to draw a network diagram they are Activity-on-Node (AON) convention and Activity-on- Arrow (AOA). AON is where circles are used to represent an activity, with arrows linking them together to show the sequence in which they are performed. . An alternative is to show the activities as arrows and use circles to connect predecessor and successor activities. This method is called the activity on-arrow (AOA) convention.

Project charter

Project charter is a document produced in the initial stage of a project. There are many definitions of project charter is given by different authors.  According to PMBOK (2008), project charter is a document used to formally authorize a project or a phase and documents initial requirements that satisfy the needs and expectations of stakeholders of the project.

But Frigenti  Enzo and Dennis (2002),  states that apart from formally recognizing the existence of a new project, project charter serves to grant the project manager to make use of the organization’s resources such as people, equipment, materials and funds to deliver the project.

Schwalbe (2006) also states that project charter is a document that formally recognizes the existence of a project and provides direction on the project’s objectives and management.

In addition Taylor (2009) provides a more detailed definition of project charter that covers all the aspects that is been mentioned above.  Taylor (2009) says project charter is also called project overview statement (POS), is the signed document that formally defines and authorizes a project

From the above definitions, it can be concluded that project charter is a formal and concise document that is used to authorize a project, provides an overview of objective of the project, and gives the authority to the project manager to allocate the required resources.

The following are the contents of project charter suggested by different authors:

Suggested contents by PMBOK (2008) :

1.      project statement of work  (business need, product scope description, strategic plan)2.      Business case

3.      Contract 4.      Enterprise environmental factors 5.   Organizational process assets  6.      Expert judgment

Suggested contents by Frigenti  Enzo and Dennis (2002):

1.      Overall project purpose2.      Priority of the project relative to other initiatives in the organization

3.      Identification of the project manager’s authority 4.      Important dates and estimated duration of the project  5.      Funds available (cost)6.      Resource limitations benefits of the project. 

Suggested contents by Taylor (2009):

1.      project authorization 2.      Project manager authorization3.      key stakeholders4.      project goals

5.      project priorities6.      scope management7.      product requirements8.      project assumptions

9.      Project constraints and boundaries10.  Initial project risks 11.  List of deliverable 12.  Cost estimates 

13.  Schedule estimates14.  Integrated change control15.  Success criteria

Depending on the project, we can select the above contents. The following contents are suggested by considering the above 3 authors suggestions.

Overall project purpose, key stakeholders, project goals, scope, requirements, Assumptions, constraints ,risk, deliverable, cost estimates, schedule estimates, change control , project approval

 

Projects Vs operations

This blog explains the difference between project and operations. According to PMBOK (2008) ,project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to produce a new product , service or result.  Project should have the following characteristics to call it as a project. They are:

Should have definite start and end- every project has a start which happens in initiation stage and end that is reached once the objectives of the project are met or when the need for the project no longer exist.

Temporary- projects has a definitive start and definitive end, thus it is a temporary endeavor. Temporary does not mean, the duration of a project is short. For example, project can start in this century and can also finish in next century.

Unique- every project is different from one another, even though project contains repetitive and same tasks of other projects, they are unique from other project. For example, if we build same and identical house in different place, still those two projects are unique as they are built in different locations.

There is also another character of project in addition to the above mentioned characteristics that is projects have limited resources.

On the other hand if we look at operations, they are repetitive or ongoing tasks carried out as routine activities.  Even though, projects and operations are different; they have  characteristics in common which are the following:

1. ·         Both are limited by resources
2. ·         Performed by people
3. ·         Both are planned, executed and controlled.

Only difference is project is temporary and unique but operation is ongoing and repetitive.

Examples of projects

• ·         Creating a new piece of software
• ·         Building a skyscraper
• ·         Installing 1500 new workstations
• ·         Designing a new network infrastructure
• ·         Upgrade of software
• ·         Producing a weekly newsletter

Examples of operations

• ·         Managing the invoicing for a company
• ·         Performing preventive maintenance on equipment
• ·         Updating a website with news and information

Progressive elaboration

In the last blog we discussed about projects and operations. The main characteristics that are been discussed are: projects are unique and projects are temporary. There is also another characteristic been discussed in PMBOK (2008) that is progressive elaboration.

Projects normally have a broad scope in the initiation stage. The scope gets elaborated once the project team gets more and more information about the domain during the progression of a project.  As a result of progressive elaboration, project manager can form a high quality and accurate project plans. Even though project team gets an accurate project plans due to progressive elaboration, it has a disadvantage too which is “scope creep”.  Scope creep means that additional scope which is been added to the project after the project’s objectives have been set. This will affect the cost, resource and time estimated for the project which is the main reasons for project to fail, overrun budget or miss deadlines.