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Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment

Civil Engineering department
Project Management PJM621S

Lesson 6 Project Quality Management

Mr Uusizi, Rian [email protected]

Office E3/4/2.14 New Engineering Building +264 61 207 2375
Learning Objectives
• Understand the importance of project quality management for engineering
products and services
• Define project quality management and understand how quality relates to
various aspects of engineering projects
• Describe quality planning and its relationship to project scope
management
• Discuss the importance of quality assurance
• Explain the main outputs of the quality control process
• Understand the tools and techniques for quality control, such as the
Seven Basic Tools of Quality, statistical sampling, and testing
• Summarize the contributions of noteworthy quality experts to modern
quality management
• Describe how leadership, the cost of quality, organizational influences and
expectations relate to improving quality in engineering projects

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The Importance of Project Quality Management

• Many people joke about the poor quality of products

• But quality is very important in projects
Examples
Bill Gates, the founder and CEO of Microsoft Corporation, stated: "If General Motors had
kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that
got 1,000 miles to the gallon.“
In response to Gates' comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: "If GM had
developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following
characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just
accept this, restart and drive on.
4. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single
"general car default" warning light.
5. The airbag system would say "are you sure?" before going off.

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What went Wrong?

• In 1986, two hospital patients died after receiving fatal

doses of radiation from a Therac 25 machine after a
software problem caused the machine to ignore calibration
data
• In one of the biggest software errors in banking history,
Chemical Bank mistakenly deducted about $15 million
from more than 100,000 customer accounts
• In August 2008, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse stated
that more than 236 million data records of U.S. residents
have been exposed due to security breaches since
January 2005

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What is Project Quality?

• The International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

defines quality as “the degree to which a set of inherent
characteristics fulfils requirements” (ISO9000:2000)
• Other experts define quality based on:
• Conformance to requirements: the project’s processes
and products meet written specifications
• Fitness for use: a product can be used as it was
intended

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What is Project Quality Management

• Project quality management ensures that the project will

satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken
• Processes include:
• Planning quality: identifying which quality standards
are relevant to the project and how to satisfy them; a
metric is a standard of measurement
• Performing quality assurance: periodically evaluating
overall project performance to ensure the project will
satisfy the relevant quality standards
• Performing quality control: monitoring specific project
results to ensure that they comply with the relevant
quality standards
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Project Quality Management Summary

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Planning Quality
• Implies the ability to anticipate situations and prepare actions to bring
about the desired outcome
• Important to prevent defects by:
• Selecting proper materials
• Training and indoctrinating people in quality
• Planning a process that ensures the appropriate outcome

Design of Experiments
• Design of experiments is a quality planning technique that helps
identify which variables have the most influence on the overall
outcome of a process
• Also applies to project management issues, such as cost and schedule
trade-offs
• Involves documenting important factors that directly contribute to
meeting customer requirements
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Who’s Responsible for Quality of Projects

• Project managers are ultimately responsible for quality

management on their projects
• Several organizations and references can help project
managers and their teams understand quality
• International Organization for Standardization
(www.iso.org)
• IEEE (www.ieee.org)

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Performing Quality Assurance

• Quality assurance includes all the activities related to

satisfying the relevant quality standards for a project
• Another goal of quality assurance is continuous quality
improvement
• Benchmarking generates ideas for quality improvements
by comparing specific project practices or product
characteristics to those of other projects or products within
or outside the performing organization
• A quality audit is a structured review of specific quality
management activities that help identify lessons learned
that could improve performance on current or future
projects

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Quality Control

The main outputs of quality control are:

Acceptance decisions
Rework
Process adjustments
There are Seven Basic Tools of Quality that help in
performing quality control

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1. Cause-and-effect diagrams

• Cause-and-effect diagrams
trace complaints about quality
problems back to the
responsible production
operations
• They help you find the root
cause of a problem
• Also known as fishbone or
Ishikawa diagrams.
• Can also use the 5 whys
technique where you repeated
ask the question “Why” (five is
a good rule of thumb) to peel
away the layers of symptoms
that can lead to the root cause

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2. Quality Control Charts
• A control chart is a graphic display of data that illustrates
the results of a process over time
• The main use of control charts is to prevent defects,
rather than to detect or reject them
• Quality control charts allow you to determine whether a
process is in control or out of control
• When a process is in control, any variations in the
results of the process are created by random events;
processes that are in control do not need to be adjusted
• When a process is out of control, variations in the
results of the process are caused by non-random
events; you need to identify the causes of those non-
random events and adjust the process to correct or
eliminate them
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3. The Seven Run Rule

• You can use quality

control charts and the
seven-run rule to look for
patterns in data
• The seven run rule states
that if seven data points in
a row are all below the
mean, above the mean,
or are all increasing or
decreasing, then the
process needs to be
examined for non-random
problems

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4. Run Chart

• A run chart displays the

history and pattern of
variation of a process
over time
• It is a line chart that
shows data points plotted
in the order in which they
occur
• Can be used to perform
trend analysis to forecast
future outcomes based on
historical patterns

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5. Scatter Diagram
A scatter diagram helps to show if there is a relationship
between two variables
The closer data points are to a diagonal line, the more
closely the two variables are related

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6. Histograms

A histogram is a bar graph of a distribution of variables

Each bar represents an attribute or characteristic of a
problem or situation, and the height of the bar represents its
frequency

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7. Pareto Charts
• A Pareto chart is a histogram that can help you identify
and prioritize problem areas
• Pareto analysis is also called the 80-20 rule, meaning that
80 percent of problems are often due to 20 percent of the
causes

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8. Flowcharts
• Flowcharts are graphic displays of the logic and flow of
processes that help you analyze how problems occur and
how processes can be improved
• They show activities, decision points, and the order of how
information is processed

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9. Statistical Sampling
• Statistical sampling involves choosing part of a population
of interest for inspection
• The size of a sample depends on how representative you
want the sample to be
• Sample size formula:
• Sample size = .25 X (certainty factor/acceptable error)2
• Be sure to consult with an expert when using statistical
analysis
Example: 5% error is acceptable Certainty Factor = 1.96 Sample size =
0.25*(1.96/.05)2 = 384

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10. DMAIC
DMAIC is a systematic, closed-loop process for continued
improvement that is scientific, and fact based
• DMAIC stands for:
• Define: define the problem/opportunity, process, and
customer requirements
• Measure: define measures, then collect, compile, and
display data
• Analyze: scrutinize process details to find improvement
opportunities
• Improve: generate solutions and ideas for improving the
problem
• Control: track and verify the stability of the improvements
and the predictability of the solution
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Testing

• Many professionals think

of testing as a stage that
comes near the end of
product development
• Testing should be done
during almost every
phase of the product
development life cycle

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Types of Tests

• Unit testing tests each individual component (often a

program) to ensure it is as defect-free as possible
• Integration testing occurs between unit and system
testing to test functionally grouped components
• System testing tests the entire system as one entity
• User acceptance testing is an independent test
performed by end users prior to accepting the delivered
system

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Modern Quality Management

• Modern quality management:

• Requires customer satisfaction
• Prefers prevention to inspection
• Recognizes management responsibility for quality
• Noteworthy quality experts include Deming, Juran, Crosby,
Ishikawa, Taguchi, and Feigenbaum

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Quality Experts
1. Deming was famous for his work in rebuilding Japan and
his 14 Points for Management
2. Juran wrote the Quality Control Handbook and ten steps
to quality improvement
3. Crosby wrote Quality is Free and suggested that
organizations strive for zero defects
4. Ishikawa developed the concepts of quality circles and
fishbone diagrams
5. Taguchi developed methods for optimizing the process of
engineering experimentation
6. Feigenbaum developed the concept of total quality control

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ISO Standards

• ISO 9000 is a quality system standard that:

• Is a three-part, continuous cycle of planning, controlling,
and documenting quality in an organization
• Provides minimum requirements needed for an
organization to meet its quality certification standards
• Helps organizations around the world reduce costs and
improve customer satisfaction
• See www.iso.org for more information

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Improving Project Quality

• Suggestions for improving quality include:

• Establish leadership that promotes quality
• Understand the cost of quality
• Focus on organizational influences and workplace
factors that affect quality
• Follow maturity models

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Leadership
• As Joseph M. Juran said in 1945, “It is most important that
top management be quality-minded. In the absence of
sincere manifestation of interest at the top, little will
happen below.”*
• A large percentage of quality problems are associated with
management, not technical issues

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The Cost of Quality

• The cost of quality is the cost of conformance plus the

cost of nonconformance
• Conformance means delivering products that meet
requirements and fitness for use
• Cost of nonconformance means taking responsibility
for failures or not meeting quality expectations
• A study reported that software bugs cost the U.S.
economy $59.6 billion each year and that one third of the
bugs could be eliminated by an improved testing
infrastructure

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Five Cost Categories Related to Quality

• Prevention cost: cost of planning and executing a project

so it is error-free or within an acceptable error range
• Appraisal cost: cost of evaluating processes and their
outputs to ensure quality
• Internal failure cost: cost incurred to correct an identified
defect before the customer receives the product
• External failure cost: cost that relates to all errors not
detected and corrected before delivery to the customer
• Measurement and test equipment costs: capital cost of
equipment used to perform prevention and appraisal
activities

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Summary

• Project quality management ensures that the project will

satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken
• Main processes include:
• Plan quality
• Perform quality assurance
• Perform quality control

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 Thank you

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