Projects are typically a complex web of processes and deliverables, passing through many hands, to a final customer. The customer will not accept a deliverable as complete that serves them no useful purpose, let alone pay for it. The traditional “Triple Constraint” model states:
The quality of work is constrained by a project’s budget, schedule, and scope
The project manager can trade between these constraints to optimize the outcome
Changes in one constraint will require adjustments of the other constraints, otherwise quality will suffer
While you may contest that this an oversimplified model for some projects, there is no doubt that this relation is a reality that many organizations face on a daily.
Last week we talked about Earned Value Management techniques that allow a project to report progress quantitatively to a customer. However, hyper focusing your team on efficiency is likely to come at the expense of quality. Rework and warranty issues will then cause costs to hit your organization in the long term, and result in delays for your customers. Both Earned Value Management and Quality Management need to be used in tandem to successfully realize continuous improvement within an organization. In fact, I would be so bold as to say that any project manager should focus on quality first, as quality is a function of competence; and efficiency will improve as competency improves.
It is important to create a Quality Management Plan (QMP), during the project kickoff phase, while the processes for project deliverable completion are being defined. The Quality Management Plan will describe the quality assurance and continuous improvement aspects of the project, forming a stable base for your expectations of quality processes, and assigning accountability. Often, the QMP can be a section within the Project Management Plan but could be handled less formally depending on the scope of the project.
In an engineering services or information based deliverable environment, the QMP will define the processes with which the team intends on meeting the quality requirements of the project. There will certainly be a cost-benefit component to defining the amount of Quality Control (QC) and balancing this with the required accuracy of first pass deliverables. This provides the ability to see an overall optimized cost for a deliverable, and easily identified (and quantifiable!) areas for improvement once the project is up and running. Prior to project kickoff, internal benchmarks can be used to set initial metrics on the acceptable cost of Quality Control, “Cost of Conformance” (fitting within the project baseline costs), and once a project is operational, the team will be able to define levels of competency based on measured performance. Some other components of effective Quality Management may include:
Checklists for QC of deliverables are helpful and ensure that QC is performed efficiently and catches mistakes reliably
Process flow charts showing the different steps of the process as well as the roles that will interact with the deliverable
Placing a value on different types of errors (e.g. critical errors vs minor errors) will help the team to focus on the right areas of competence over time
A passing QC score Vs a failing QC score can be defined for different tasks
Critical gaps in knowledge can be quickly identified within the team
Feedback is essential - it is tempting for a QC’er to fix the issues and move on, this is not a winning strategy long term, especially if your QC’er leaves the organization at some point
Resources, working through the quality process, should progress in competency level and require reducing (sample) amounts of QC as they improve. Measurement systems and KPIs should be utilized to track each processes’ performance
Audit and Process Analysis/task observation
Referring back to the scenario in “Earned Value Management” (www.modusoperationsllc.com/blog/earned-value-management), it is possible that a team might focus on the wrong problem, without an effective Quality Management System.
Example: “Task XYZ” is over-running the budget. You’ve reworked the process twice but see very little improvement in performance. A look at the division and classification of labor and quality control scores indicates that the preceding task is causing the budget overruns in XYZ. You invest in the improvement of prior tasks and see reductions in error rates, and QC time required on ALL subsequent tasks. You have data to prove ROI and have lessons learned to share with the rest of your organization.
“No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we’re not solving the right problem, the project fails.”
Effective Quality Management will have many, less tangible benefits: one bonus area is improved team morale. Everyone dislikes rework and many people respond very positively to being able to measure improvement in their skill. The metrics created during the formulation of quality guidelines can also be leveraged for competency measurement and performance update discussions. Team members will naturally work to improve their scores, seeing continuous improvement as an engaging and challenging activity, while creating a culture that values quality.
Ultimately, a quality culture will yield great customer satisfaction, long term partnerships, and repeat business.