Pmbok Chapter 8 - Project Quality Management

Front 1

What does Project Quality Management include?

Back 1

Includes all activities of the performing organization that determine quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities so that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken.

Front 2

Describe 8.1 Plan Quality

Back 2

Identify quality requirements and standards for the project and product, and document how the project will demonstrate compliance. Plan quality is performed in parallel with other project planning processes, because it may require changes to other parts of the project plan.

Front 3

What is Quality?

Back 3

- Quality is defined by the customer
- Quality requires an organization-wide commitment
- Plan-Do-Check-Act, known as the Deming Cycle
- The PMBOK Guide and PMI are compatible with the International Standards Organization (ISO) 9000 series of standards

Front 4

Why Worry about Quality?

Back 4

- Failure to meet quality standards in project management or the product of the project can have serious negative consequences: Safety, Liability, Re-work, Scrap, etc.
- The cost of preventing mistakes is always much less than the cost of correcting them.
- Customer satisfaction is both conformance to requirements and fitness for use.

Front 5

Define Quality

Back 5

The degree in which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements.
- Stated or implied needs are inputs to developing project requirements.
- Conformance to requirements or specifications

Front 6

Why is Quality not synonymous with "grade"?

Back 6

- Grade is a category or rank given to entities having the same functional use but different technical characteristics."
- Example: Grades of steel, eggs, tires, etc.
- The PM team is responsible for determining and delivering the required levels of both quality and grade.

Front 7

Why is Precision and Accuracy not equivalent?

Back 7

- Precision: Consistency, i.e. that repeated measurements have the same value with little scatter.
- Accuracy: Correctness, i.e. that the measurement is very close to the true value.

Front 8

What are the INPUTS to the process - Plan Quality?

Back 8

1. Scope baseline, including the scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary. These documents should contain information about the products and the acceptance criteria, along with technical details useful for planning quality.
2. Stakeholder register, which will indicate stakeholders who have an interest in or impact on quality. We should discuss quality requirements with appropriate stakeholders.
3. Cost performance baseline, which documents the accepted time phase for measuring cost performance. The "how much"
4. Schedule baseline, which documents accepted schedule performance. The "when"
5. Risk register, containing information on threats and opportunities related to or impacting quality
6. Enterprise environmental factors, including regulations, rules, standards, and guidelines specific to the application area.
7. Organizational process assets, including quality policies, procedures, and guidelines, historical databases, and lessons learned. Also includes the quality policy as endorsed by senior management, setting organizational direction with regards to quality. this will guide us in making trade-off decisions. If no policy exists, the project management team should create on for the project.

Front 9

What are the TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES of the process - Plan Quality?

Back 9

1. Cost-benefit analysis
2. Cost of quality
3. Control charts
4. Benchmarking
5. Design of experiments
6. Statistical sampling
7. Flowcharting
8. Proprietary quality management methodologies
9. Additional quality planning tools

Front 10

What are the OUTPUTS of the process - Plan Quality?

Back 10

1. Quality management plan
2. Quality metrics
3. Quality checklists
4. Process improvement plan
5. Project document Updates

Front 11

Describe Cost-Benefit Analysis

Back 11

Making trade-offs based on expense vs. value. The primary benefits of meeting quality requirements are less rework, higher productivity, lower costs, and increased stakeholder satisfaction. The primary cost is the expense associated with project quality management activities. Each quality activity is justified through this "business case" for including the activity.

Front 12

Describe Cost of Quality

Back 12

This is the total cost of ALL efforts to achieve product/service quality, including all work to ensure conformance to requirements, and all rework resulting from non-conformance. These are three types of cost involved:
- Prevention
- Appraisal
- Failure, both internal costs and external costs:
-- Internal costs include rework and scrap
-- External costs include liabilities, warranty costs, and lost business (frequently the most important cost!)

Front 13

Describe Control Charts

Back 13

Graphical displays of results, over time, of a process:
- Also use statistical probability
- Used to determine if a process is "in control"
- Focus is on preventing defects, not on detection or elimination
- Used to verify the impact on a process when changes are made

The idea is that if the process is in control, then the product of the process will be good.

Front 14

What are the Causes of Variations on Control Charts?

Back 14

Random (common) cause:
- Inherent in the system
- Accounts for 85% of variation
- Is management's responsibility to correct, by changing the process to be more "robust"
- Requires investigation and process change

Assignable (special) cause:
- Traceable to specific source
- Accounts for 15% of variation
- Is management's responsibility to eliminate
- Can, and generally should be, corrected quickly

Front 15

What are the Control Chart Concepts?

Back 15

- Upper control limit = UCL
- Lower control limit = LCL
- UCL and LCL usually set at +/- 3 sigma
- Mean = x ("x bar")
- Process is In Control or process is Out of Control
- Over controlling (Also called Type I error), refers to adjusting the process when nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.
- Under controlling (Also called a Type II error), refers to the failure to adjust the process when something out of the ordinary has occurred.

Front 16

Describe Benchmarking

Back 16

Benchmarking is comparing the process and the product of the project to similar situations either within the organization or to similar organizations. Benchmarking is used for process and product improvement, to determine:
- Which products or services to offer and which features should be included?
- What processes are other groups using to achieve customer satisfaction?
- What metrics or goals are used to measure the processes or products that achieve customer satisfaction?

Front 17

Describe Design of Experiments

Back 17

Design of Experiments is a statistical method that helps identify which factors may influence specific variables of a product or process under development or in production.
1. Change the variables to assess different outcomes to determine an optimal solution
2. Applied to products of a project
3. Assess impacts on cost and schedule

With design of experiments, you can determine:
1. Which variable has the greatest effect
2. The relationship between each variable and the quality (customer-focused) specifications
3. The best value for each variable to optimize quality or value.

Front 18

Describe Statistical sampling

Back 18

Statistical Sampling is choosing part of the population of results for inspection. An example would be to check every tenth product. Then we use the result to predict the quality of the total population.

It's based on probability
- Small sample from a group can project what the total group will be like.
- Reduce cost of quality control while maintaining high degree of confidence

Sampling is a tool that is used to indicate how much data to collect and how often it should be collected. This tool defines the samples to take to quantify a system, process, issue, or problem.

Front 19

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Statistical Sampling?

Back 19

Advantages
- Smaller inspection staff
- Less product damage
- Quicker decisions
- Fewer inspection errors
- Rejects dramatize problems

Disadvantages
- Sampling risks
- Less information

Front 20

Describe Flowcharting

Back 20

Flowcharting, in which a graphical presentation represents a process, showing the relationship between the process steps. While there are lots of styles of these, they all show activities, decision points, and order of processing.

Front 21

What are some additional quality planning tools?

Back 21

- Brainstorming
- Affinity diagrams, used to logically group things
- Force field analysis, showing forces for and against change
- Nominal group techniques, brainstorming for a larger group
- Prioritization matrices, used to rank by importance

Front 22

Describe the Quality Management Plan

Back 22

The Quality Management Plan describes how the product management team will implement the performing organization's quality policy. It is a component or subsidiary of the project management plan. It addresses:
- Quality assurance (QA)
- Quality control (QC)
- Continuous process improvement approaches

Front 23

What elements are typically found in a Quality Management Plan?

Back 23

- Quality policy
- Organizational structure
- Roles and responsibilities
- Regulations and standards
- Processes and procedures
- Inspections required
- Types of testing and testers required
- User training
- Final acceptance critiera

Front 24

Describe Quality Metrics

Back 24

Quality Metrics are operational definitions that define key attributes of project result, and metrics to be applied to those attributes, along with performance characteristics and how the attributes will be assessed.

Operational Definition Elements:
- Criterion - the standard against which to evaluate
- Test - A specific procedure or process for measuring a characteristic
- Decision - the determination as to whether the test results show that the characteristic meets the specified criteria.

Tolerance defines allowable variance in the metric.

Front 25

Describe Quality Checklists

Back 25

Quality Checklists are used in quality control to verify that the required steps have been performed.

Front 26

Describe a Process Improvement Plan

Back 26

A Process Improvement Plan, details steps for analyzing processes to identify how to enhance value. Can include process boundaries, configuration, metrics, and target for improvement.

Front 27

Describe the Process - 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance

Back 27

- Auditing the quality requirements and results from quality control to ensure appropriate quality standards and operational definitions are used.
- QA support may be provided to the PM team, the management of the performing organization, the customer or sponsor, as well as other stakeholders not actively involved in the work of the project.
- Provides an umbrella for continuous process improvement, an iterative means for improving the quality of all processes.

Front 28

What are the INPUTS of the process - Perform Quality Assurance?

Back 28

1. Project management plan, including the quality management plan and process improvement plan
2. Quality metrics
3. Work performance information, including technical performance measures, deliverable status, schedule and budget status. Comes from Direct and Manage Project Execution.
4. Quality Control Measurements, from Perform Quality Control

Front 29

What are the TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES of the process - Perform Quality Assurance?

Back 29

1. Plan Quality and Perform Quality Control tools and techniques
2. Quality audits
3. Process analysis

Front 30

What are the OUTPUTS of the process - Perform Quality Assurance?

Back 30

1. Organizational process assets updates including quality standards
2. Change requests, which go to Perform Integrated Change Control, to change plans to implement improvements
3. Project management plan updates, including the quality management plan, the schedule management plan, and the cost management plan
4. Project document updates, including quality audit reports, training plans, and process documentation.

Front 31

Describe Quality Audits

Back 31

Structured independent review to determine whether project activities comply with organizational and project policies, processes, and procedures:

Objectives are to:
- Identify all good/best practices being implemented
- Identifies all gaps/shortcomings
- Share the good practices implemented in similar projects
- Proactively offer assistance to improve implementation of processes
- Highlight contributions of each audit in the lessons learned repository

Front 32

Describe Process Analysis

Back 32

Process Analysis follows the steps outlined in the Process Improvement Plan to identify needed improvements from an organizational and technical standpoint.
- Examines problems experienced, constraints experienced, non-value-added activities
- Includes root cause analysis to determine the underlying causes that led to a problem/situation, and create preventive actions for similar problems.

Front 33

Describe the process - Perform Quality Control

Back 33

Monitoring and recording results of quality activities to assess performance and recommend necessary changes.
- Should be performed throughout the project
- Quality standards include project processes and product goals
- Project results include deliverables and project management results, such as cost and schedule performance
- Can include taking action to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory project performance

PM team should have working knowledge of statistical quality control, especially sampling and probability to help evaluate QC outputs.

Front 34

What is the difference between Prevention and Inspection?

Back 34

- Prevention is keeping errors out of a process
- Inspection is keeping errors away from customers

Front 35

What is the difference between Attribute Sampling and Variables Sampling?

Back 35

- Attribute sampling is when the result conforms or doesn't conform.
- Variables Sampling is when the result is rated on continuous scale that measures degree of conformity

Front 36

What is the difference between Special Causes and Common Causes?

Back 36

- Special Causes are unusual events
- Common (Random) causes are normal process variation

Front 37

What is the difference between Tolerances and Control Limits?

Back 37

- Tolerance is when the result is acceptable if it falls within a range
- Control Limits is when the process is in control if results falls within the limits

Front 38

What are the INPUTS of the process - Perform Quality Control?

Back 38

1. Project management plan, including quality management plan
2. Quality metrics
3. Quality checklists
4. Work performance measurements, planned vs. actual measures of technical, schedule, and budget performance
5. Approved change requests
6. Deliverables
7. Organizational process assets, including quality standards, guidelines, and procedures

Front 39

What are the TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES of the process - Perform Quality Control?

Back 39

1. Cause and effect diagrams
2. Control Charts
3. Flowcharting
4. Histogram
5. Pareto Chart
6. Run Chart
7. Scatter Diagram
8. Statistical Sampling
9. Inspection
10. Approved change request review

Front 40

What are the OUTPUTS of the process - Perform Quality Control?

Back 40

1. Quality Control Measurements
2. Validated changes
3. Validated deliverables
4. Organizational process assets updates
5. Change requests
6. Project management plan updates
7. Project document updates

Front 41

Describe a Cause and Effect Diagram

Back 41

AKA Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram
- Identifies possible causes of problems
- Breaks problem down for analysis

The six primary categories of defect causes are:
1. Machinery (equipment)
2. Materials
3. Methods (processes or procedures)
4. Measurements
5. Environment
6. People

Front 42

Describe a Histogram a Pareto Chart

Back 42

A histogram is a bar chart, ordered by frequency of occurrence, that shows how many results were generated by type or category of identified cause. A Pareto chart reflects the Pareto principle.
- Rank ordering used to guide corrective action
- Take action to fix the problems that cause the greatest number of defects first.
- Use to analyze counts that are in categories.

Front 43

What is the Pareto's Principle?

Back 43

Pareto's principle is based on the unequal distribution of things in the universe. It is the law of the "significant few versus the trivial many." The significant few things will generally make up 80% of the whole,which the trivial many will make up about 20%.

Front 44

Describe a Run Chart

Back 44

A Run chart is:
- Based on historical results over time
- Uses mathematical techniques to predict future outcomes based on past results
- Used to monitor technical, cost and schedule performance

Front 45

What are Dr. W. Edwards Deming's 14 Points for Management?

Back 45

1. Create consistency of purpose.
2. Adopt the new philosophy..
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects.
11. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob workers and management of their right to pride of workmanship.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work ton accomplish the transformation.

Front 46

What is Dr. W. Edwards Deming's 85/15 Rule?

Back 46

Deming believed that every worker has nearly unlimited potential if placed in an environment that adequately supports, educates, and nurtures senses of pride and responsibility.

He stated that the majority, 85 percent, of a worker's effectiveness is determined by his environment and only minimally by his own skill. Today it is popularly known as the 85/15 Rule.

Front 47

What Dr. W. Edwards Deming's Plan Do Check Act Process?

Back 47

Plan > Do > Check > Act

After Act go back to Plan in a continuous loop

PLAN: Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output (the target or goals). By making the expected output the focus, it differs from other techniques in that the completeness and accuracy of the specification is also part of the improvement.

DO: Implement the new processes, often on a small scale if possible, to test possible effects. It is important to collect data for charting and analysis for the following "CHECK" step.

CHECK: Measure the new processes and compare the results (collected in "DO" above) against the expected results (targets or goals from the "PLAN") to ascertain any differences. Charting data can make this much easier to see trends in order to convert the collected data into information. Information is what you need for the next step "ACT".

ACT: Analyze the differences to determine their cause. Each will be part of either one or more of the P-D-C-A steps. Determine where to apply changes that will include improvement. When a pass through these four steps does not result in the need to improve, refine the scope to which PDCA is applied until there is a plan that involves improvement.

Front 48

Describe Joseph M. Juran's Quality Trilogy.

Back 48

Quality Planning
- Identify who are the customers.
- Determine the needs of those customers.
- Translate those needs into our language.
- Develop a product that can respond to those needs.
- Optimize the product features so as to meet our needs and customer needs

Quality Improvement
- Develop a process which is able to produce the product
- Optimize the process

Quality Control
- Prove that the process can produce the product under operating conditions with minimal inspection
- Transfer the process to Operations

Front 49

Describe Phillip Crosby's Four Absolutes of Quality Management

Back 49

1. Quality is defined as conformance to requirements, not as 'goodness' or 'elegance'
2. The system for causing quality is prevention, not appraisal.
3. The performance standard must be Zero Defects, not "that's close enough"
4. The measurement of quality is the Price of Non-conformance, not indices.

Front 50

Describe Kaoru Ishikawa's Six Steps

Back 50

Ishikawa expanded Deming's four steps into six:
1. (Plan) Determine goals and targets
2. (Plan) Determine methods of reaching goals
3. (Do) Engage in education and training
4. (Do) Implement work
5. (Check) Check the effects of implementation
6. (Act) Take appropriate action

Front 51

Describe The Taguchi Method

Back 51

- The Lost Function - Taguchi devised an equation to quantify the decline of a customer's perceived value of a product as its quality declines
- Orthogonal Arrays and Linear Graphs - When evaluating a production process, Analysis will undoubtedly identify outside factors or noise which cause deviations from mean.
- Robustness - Some noise factors can be identified, isolated and even eliminated but others cannot. For instance it is too difficult to predict and prepare for any possible weather condition.

Front 52

What is Total Quality Management (TQM)?

Back 52

- TQM is NOT a Program

TQM is not something else we do, it is the way we do what we do. TQM's mission is how we do it and how we do it better.

- Continuous Improvement

An attitude of continuous improvement must prevail. The search for and exploitation of small incremental improvements must become the norm. The acceptance of small wins must become part of our framework. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service to improve quality and productivity and, thus, constantly decrease costs (Deming point 5)

Front 53

What are the elements of Total Quality Management (TQM)?

Back 53

- Constancy of Purpose
- Not a Cookbook
- Know Who Our Customer Is and What Our Product/Service Is
- Vision
- Values
- Why Change is Required
- How to Deal with Change
- Cost of Quality
- Customer Focus and Satisfaction

Front 54

What are the goals of Total Quality Management (TQM)?

Back 54

- Reduce cost through quality improvement
- Measure quality: loss must be measured as a system-wide cost on a life cycle basis (i.e., loss to society), not as just the internal costs of non-conformance or defect detection at the time of shipment.
- Optimize internal and external costs to minimize loss to society.
- Measure quality as deviations from target value, not specification limits or tolerances.
- Realize that quality decreases continuously as a quadratic function as process output varies from target, versus the step function mentality that implies that all parts within specification are equally as good.
- Communicate quality loss in terms of monetary units.
- Design quality into products and services
- Design products and processes to be insensitive to uncontrolled variation (robustness) at the lowest possible cost.
- Focus on improving the desired product characteristic (signal), regardless of the level of uncontrolled variation (noise), to guide design.
- Use statistical methods throughout the product life cycle for quality improvement, especially early in the design process when the leverage is the greatest.
- Lower barriers that inhibit the use of statistical methods by providing simplified techniques that can be quickly taught and applied.
- Combine engineering methods with statistical methods as part of providing simplified techniques that can be quickly taught and easily applied by all.

Front 55

Describe ISO 9000

Back 55

ISO 9000 is primarily concerned with "Quality Management". In the everyday context, like "beauty", everyone may have his or her idea of what "quality" is. But, in the ISO 9000 context, the standardized definition of quality refers to all those features of a product (or service) which are required by the customer.
- "Quality management" means what the organization does to ensure that its products or services satisfy the customer's quality requirements and comply with any regulations applicable to those products or services.

Front 56

What are known as the Seven Basic Tools of Quality?

Back 56

1. Cause and Effect Diagram
2. Control Charts
3. Flowcharting
4. Histogram
5. Pareto Chart
6. Run Chart
7. Scatter Diagram

Front 57

What are the KAIZEN 10 Forms of Muda (Waste)?

Back 57

1. Waste of over producing (Making more just because the material is available, a machine is available as we have an operator)
2. Waste of time (Waiting, batch and queue mentality)
3. Waste from transporting (Moving materials with a forklift numerous times)
4. Waste of over processing (Too complex process or a process that has to be done several times to be correct).
5. Waste of inventory (WIP)
6. Waste from excess motion of operators and workers (Lack of good ergonomics)
7. Waste from scrap and rework. (Rework negates any possibility of profit on most reworked items)
8. Human under-utilization
9. Improper use of computers
10. Working to the wrong metrics

Front 58

What is MTBF?

Back 58

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) = 1/(sum of all the part failure rates)

Front 59

What is MTTF?

Back 59

Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) is the mean time expected until the first failure of a piece of equipment

Front 60

What is MTTR?

Back 60

Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) is the total amount of time spent performing all corrective maintenance repairs divided by the total number of those repairs.

Front 61

What is Failure Rate?

Back 61

Failure Rate is the number of failures experienced or expected for a device divided by the total equipment operating time. For constant failure rate items, i.e., exponentially distributed failures, the failure rate is the numerical inverse of the mean time between failures (MTBF).

Front 62

What is Availability?

Back 62

Availability is the Probability that a system is operational when called upon to perform its function. The numerical value of availability is expressed as a probability from 0 to 1. Availability calculations take into account both the failures and the repairs of the system

- Component: (MTBF-MTTR)/MTBF
- System: (Availability1 * Availability2 * ... Availabilityn)

Front 63

What is Reliability?

Back 63

Reliability is the ability of an item to perform a required function under stated conditions for a stated period of time. The numerical value of reliability is expressed as a probability from 0 to 1 and is also sometimes known as the probability of mission success. Reliability is the probability, assuming the system was operating at time zero, that it continues to operation until time t.

Front 64

What should you remember about Quality Assurance?

Back 64

Quality Assurance is an EXECUTING process. It occurs before the fact, and is about process.

Front 65

What should you remember about Quality Control?

Back 65

Quality Control is a CONTROLLING process that involves monitoring specific project results to determine whether they comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory results. It looks back at the product.

Front 66

What should you remember about Scope Verification?

Back 66

Scope Verification is a CONTROLLING process that is primarily concerned with acceptance of the deliverables, and is a Scope Management process, not a Quality Management Process.