IT Project Management Individual Assignment
IT Project Management
version 1.0
Diploma in Information Technology
Copyright © 2020 by Singapore Institute of Management Pte Ltd. All rights reserved.
Lesson 15: Project Quality Management –
Part 1
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Learning objectives
Understand the importance of project quality management for information technology products and services.
Define project quality management.
Understand how quality relates to various aspects of information technology projects.
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Learning objectives
Describe quality planning and its relationship to project scope management.
Discuss the importance of quality assurance (QA)
Explain the main outputs of the quality control (QC) process.
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15.1 What Is Quality?
The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) defines quality as “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements” (ISO9000:2000)
Other experts define quality based on conformance to requirements and fitness for use.
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15.1 What Is Quality?
Conformance to requirements means that the project’s processes and products meet written specifications.
Fitness for use means that a product can be used as it was intended.
The customer ultimately decides that the quality level is acceptable.
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15.1 What Is Quality?
| Dimension | Description |
| Performance | Will the product perform its intended function? |
| Special Features | Additional function to the product |
| Perceived Quality | What is the reputation of the company or its product? |
| Conformance | Is the product made exactly to the designer or customer requirements/specifications? |
| Aesthetics | How does the product look like? |
| Reliability | The probability that the product can function under stated condition without failure for a given period of time. |
| Durability | What is the lifetime of the product? |
| Serviceability | How easy is it to repair the product? |
Garvin (1987) proposed the following 8 dimensions of product quality
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15.1.1 IT Projects Quality Dimensions
| Dimension | Description |
| Functionality | The degree to which a system performs its intended function |
| Features | The system’s special characteristics that appeal to user |
| Performance | How well a product or service performs the customer’s intended use |
| Reliability | The ability of a product or service to perform as expected under normal conditions |
| System outputs | The screens and reports the system generates |
| Maintainability | The ease of performing maintenance on a product |
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15.1.2 Importance of Project Quality Management
The triple constraint is always at the top of the project manager’s mind, but there is a 4th concern that is sometimes forgotten in the maelstrom of project management—quality.
It doesn’t matter if we got the best software, met every milestone and completed the project under budget if the deliverable didn’t meet quality standards.
That’s why project quality management is so important.
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15.2 Quality Management Concepts
Customer Satisfaction – Meeting or exceeding the expectations of the customer.
Total Quality Management (TQM) - Management & employees focus on continually finding ways to improve quality of the products or processes.
Continuous Improvement (Kaizen) - Making small and incremental improvement continuously.
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15.2.1 Customer Satisfaction
Without customer satisfaction there can be no quality.
The deliverable must meet the requirements, or else the project has failed because the product of the project and the management of the project didn’t meet with the expectations of the customer or stakeholder.
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15.2.2 Total Quality Management
Total Quality Management (TQM) refers to a quality emphasis that encompasses the entire organisation, from supplier to customer.
TQM stresses a commitment by management to have a continuous companywide drive toward excellence in all aspects of products and services that are important to the customer.
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It is a never-ending process of continuous improvement that covers people, equipment, suppliers, materials and procedures.
The basis of the philosophy is that every aspect of a project can be improved.
15.2.3 Continuous Improvement
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Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle
15.2.3 Continuous Improvement
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15.2.3 Continuous Improvement
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15.3 How Quality Relates to IT Project
Many IT project managers face pressures to deliver systems and technologies which meet the customer’s ever-changing needs that quality suffers.
Many of the problems occur due to the complexity of technology and the rapid pace of change.
These dynamic conditions are not likely to abate; in fact, they're accelerating at an alarming rate.
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15.3 How Quality Relates to IT Project
However, performance can be greatly improved by ensuring that tactical decisions in IT project focus on the quality aspects.
Quality improvements in IT project delivery can be achieved by considering user satisfaction, integration and flexibility in the early stage of decision process and reinforcing them throughout the review process.
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15.3 How Quality Relates to IT Project
Although there are no perfect solutions, quality management helps to ensure standards are rigorously enforced and embedded into the thinking of the entire IT project team.
One of the challenges for IT project is to tap on the past quality experiences and valuable lessons.
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15.4 Project Scope & Quality Management
Scope and quality are related—but they are in fact two different things.
Project scope defines the fundamental “What” of a project.
Project quality is a measure of “How Good” the project scope will be when completed. Quality requirements are essentially constraints that are placed on the delivered scope.
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15.4 Project Scope & Quality Management
Project scope and quality management go hand-in-hand in today’s project environment.
The difference between scope and quality can be a little confusing for new project managers.
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Both are concerned with the:
Assurance that the project includes all the work required to complete the project successfully.
Inclusion in the project of the processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it is undertaken.
15.4 Project Scope & Quality Management
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The duality of project quality and process quality are united with change control through project scope and quality management.
15.4 Project Scope & Quality Management
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15.5 Project Quality Management
Project quality management encompasses the processes and activities that are used to figure out and achieve the quality of the deliverables of a project.
For project management, quality is simply what the customer or stakeholder needs from the project deliverables.
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15.5 Project Quality Management
Project quality management ensures that the project will satisfy the stated or implied needs for which it was undertaken.
Key outputs produced as part of project quality management include a quality management plan, quality metrics, and updates to the project management plan and project documents
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Project quality management involves 3 main processes:
Quality Planning (QP)
Quality Assurance (QA)
Quality Control (QC)
15.5 Project Quality Management
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15.5 Project Quality Management
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15.5 Project Quality Management
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A good quality management plan starts with a clear definition of the goal of the project.
These following questions help to identify and define quality requirements, allowing the project team to discuss the approach and plans needed to achieve those goals.
15.6 Quality Planning (QP)
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The questions:
What is the product or deliverable supposed to accomplish?
What does it look like?
What is it supposed to do?
How do you measure customer satisfaction?
How do you determine whether or not the project was successful?
15.6 Quality Planning (QP)
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This includes assessing the risks to success, setting high standards, documenting everything, and defining the methods and tests to achieve, control, predict, and verify success.
Be sure to include quality management tasks in the project plan and delegate these tasks to workgroups and/or individuals who will report and track quality metrics.
15.6 Quality Planning (QP)
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15.6.1 Project Metrics
Project Metrics are used to measure, monitor and control the project.
They usually show how a project manager is able to estimate schedule and cost.
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15.6.1 Project Metrics
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15.6.1 Project Metrics
They enable a software project manager to:
Minimise the development time by making the adjustments necessary to avoid delays and potential problems and risks.
Assess product cost on an ongoing basis & modify the technical approach to improve cost estimation.
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How is software quality metrics looked at?
Process - Measure the efficacy of processes. What works, what doesn't.
Code quality
Programmer productivity
Software engineer productivity
Requirements,
Design,
Testing
and all other tasks done by software engineers
15.6.1 Project Metrics
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Two software programmers are working on two similar modules.
Programmers X and Y made 332 and 206 errors respectively during the software development, before releasing to clients.
Which programmer do you think has better quality performance?
15.6.1 Project Metrics
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How is software quality metrics looked at?
Software
Maintainability
Usability
And all other quality factors
Management
Cost estimation
Schedule estimation, duration, time
Staffing
15.6.1 Project Metrics
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15.6.2 Sample Quality Metrics
Many organisations use charts to keep track of metrics, such as a project dashboard — a graphical screen summarising key project metrics
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15.6.3 Project Dashboard
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15.7 Quality Assurance (QA)
Quality assurance is the planned and systemic activities implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled.
Use quality assurance to make sure the processes are in fact working towards making the project deliverables meet quality requirements.
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15.7 Quality Assurance (QA)
Performing QA is periodically evaluating overall project performance to ensure the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards.
Two ways to accomplish this is by using a process checklist and a project audit.
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15.7 Quality Assurance (QA)
QA tests use a system of metrics to determine whether or not the quality management plan is proceeding in an acceptable manner.
By using both qualitative and quantitative metrics, project manager can effectively measure project quality with customer satisfaction.
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15.7 Quality Assurance (QA)
These tests or quality audits will help to predict and verify the achievement of goals and identify the need for corrective actions.
QA tests will help to map quality metrics to quality goals, allowing status report of quality at periodic project review meetings.
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15.8 Quality Control (QC)
QC involves operational techniques meant to ensure quality standards. This includes identifying, analysing, and correcting problems.
While QA occurs before a problem is identified, QC is reactionary and occurs after a problem has been identified and suggests methods of improvement.
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15.8 Quality Control (QC)
QC monitors specific project outputs and determines compliance with applicable standards. It also identifies project risk factors, their mitigation, and looks for ways to prevent and eliminate unsatisfactory performance.
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15.8 Quality Control (QC)
QC can also ensure that the project is on budget and on schedule.
Monitoring the project outputs can be done through peer reviews and testing.
By catching deliverables that aren’t meeting the agreed upon standards throughout, we’ll be able to simply adjust the direction rather than having to entirely redo certain aspects.
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15.8.1 Outputs of Quality Control (QC)
The outputs of the QC process are:
Measurements – the documented results of the activities done in the QC processes (e.g. data gathering, inspection, testing/product evaluations)
Change requests – arises due to the recommendation from QC processes, which can affect the components or the project itself.
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15.8.1 Outputs of Quality Control (QC)
The outputs of the QC process are:
Updates of project documents -
Lessons learned register
Issue log – for deliverables not meeting quality requirements
Risk register – Update the new risks identified, especially causes of quality variance.
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Questions?
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