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).