Even if an organization completes projects on schedule and under budget, but the product/service quality is poor, then the project is regarded as a failure. Delivering quality products is vital for a business as they help them gain more customers and stand out in a competitive marketplace. Therefore, it is essential to develop a Project Quality Management Plan to produce quality products. It outlines detailed project requirements, project deliverables, quality tools, and techniques for delivering consistently high-quality goods and services. Additionally, it serves as a guide for the project managers to follow established processes to meet quality standards.
Quality Management Knowledge Area In PMBOK
The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide 7th edition emphasizes providing quality products that align with project objectives and fulfill the expectations of customers and stakeholders. It also recommends creating a Quality Management Plan that defines policies, procedures, and guidelines for achieving quality objectives. Therefore, candidates studying for PMP Exam should have a thorough knowledge of Quality Management.
What Is Project Quality Management?
Project Quality Management is a section defined for PMP aspirants that refers to managing quality in the product and services. It includes the procedures and processes required to determine and achieve the quality of a project’s deliverables. Quality management processes help in reducing project costs, product failure, and increased customer satisfaction.
What Is Project Quality Management Plan?
The Quality Management Plan is an integral part of the project management plan that outlines policies, procedures, and guidelines required to achieve the quality objectives. It is a document that assists the project manager and team in performing quality management activities. A Quality Management Plan is prepared, executed, and maintained by the project manager.
Benefits Of Quality Management
Customer satisfaction
Delivering poor quality products leads to customer dissatisfaction and damages the reputation of the organization. Project quality management assists in ensuring that processes are optimized for quality and that all deliverables are produced to satisfy customer expectations.
Better quality
Project Quality Management includes plans, policies, and procedures that aid in the improvement of all aspects of a project. This results in the production of high-quality products as per the customer requirements and stakeholders.
Team productivity
Project managers develop a Project Quality Management Plan defining the scope, cost, and objectives of the project. This assists the project team in having a clear knowledge of the project objectives and in achieving them. In addition, it boosts team productivity and project success.
Decreased costs
Project Quality Management Plan helps to identify the potential risk that reduces the quality of the product. This helps in reducing operational costs by eliminating unnecessary processes. Furthermore, it helps in meeting business goals and objectives which leads to increased profits and revenues.
Eliminate human errors
A Quality Management Plan is a set of guidelines and principles that is followed by everyone involved in the project. This results in the reduction of human errors and increases productivity and labor efficiency.
Three Processes In Quality Management
Every PMP certified individual is required to know these Quality Management processes: Quality Planning, Quality Assurance, and Quality Control.
Quality planning
Quality planning is the first step in Quality Management. During this process, project managers define the project goal and identify the quality requirements of the product. They assess and document the risks, customer requirements, stakeholders’ expectations, establish standards, create quality metrics, and allocate tasks to team members.
Quality assurance
The quality assurance process ensures that the project is moving towards delivering quality services. Project managers use process checklists and project audits methods for Quality assurance. It is applied to the deliverables, processes and procedures used to manage the project. Project Managers use both qualitative and quantitative metrics to assess project quality with customer satisfaction. They further utilize quality audits to ensure that project objectives are met and to identify remedial measures.
Quality control
Quality control involves operational techniques to maintain quality standards. It keeps track of project deliverables and compliance with relevant standards. It also identifies project risks and develops strategies to prevent and eliminate them. In addition, it ensures that the project delivered is within the constraints. Quality control is accomplished by peer evaluations and testing. The outcomes of these methods determine whether corrective action is required or not.
Conclusion
Quality Management is important in delivering quality products and services to customers and stakeholders. This process continuously measures all project activities and takes corrective action in order to achieve the desired quality. Therefore, it is vital for project managers to have knowledge of Quality Management to achieve project success.
