Chapter 4:

Project Quality Management

March 14, 2024

 Contents

 Quality of IT Projects
 Stages of IT Quality Management
 Quality Planning
 Quality Assurance
 Quality Control
 Quality Standards
 Tools and Techniques For Quality Control
 What Went Wrong?
• 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 Do you Mean by Project Quality?
• The International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) defines quality as “the
degree to which a set of inherent characteristics
fulfills requirements” (ISO 9000:2000).
• Other experts define quality based on:
• Conformance to requirements: the project’s
processes and products meet written specifications.
• Fitness for use: a IT product can be used as it was
intended.
 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
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 Quality Planning

• Important to prevent defects by:

• Selecting proper materials

• Training and instructing people in quality

• Planning a process that ensures the appropriate outcome

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 Design of Experimental Techniques

• Design of experiments- It 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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 Scope Aspects of IT Projects
• Functionality is the degree to which a system performs
its intended function.
• Features are the system’s special characteristics that
appeal to users.
• System outputs are the screens and reports the system
generates.
• Performance addresses how well a product or service
performs the customer’s intended use.
• Reliability is the ability of a product or service to
perform as expected under normal conditions.
• Maintainability addresses the ease of performing
maintenance on a product.
 Responsible Person for the 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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 Quality Assurance
• Quality assurance- 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.
 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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 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.
 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.
 Histograms and Pareto Charts

• A histogram is a bar graph of a distribution of

variables.
• Each bar represents an attribute of problem or
characteristic of a problem or situation, and the
height of the bar represents its frequency.
• 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.
 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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 Six Sigma
• Six Sigma is “a comprehensive and flexible system for
achieving, sustaining, and maximizing business success.

• Six Sigma is uniquely driven by close understanding of

customer needs, disciplined use of facts, data, and
statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing,
improving, and reinventing business processes.”*

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 Six Sigma Projects Use Project Management

• The training for Six Sigma includes many project

management concepts, tools, and techniques

• For example, Six Sigma projects often use business

cases, project charters, schedules, budgets, and so
on

• Six Sigma projects are done in teams;

• The project manager is often called the team leader,

and the sponsor is called the champion.
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 Testing
• Many IT professionals think of testing as a stage that
comes near the end of IT product development.

• Testing should be done during almost every phase of

the IT product development life cycle.

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Testing Tasks in the Software Development Life
Cycle
 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.
 Modern Quality Management & Assurance

• Modern quality management:

• Requires customer satisfaction

• Prefers prevention to inspection

• Recognizes management responsibility for quality

 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

 Improving IT Project Quality
• Suggestions for improving quality for IT projects
include:
• Establish leadership that promotes quality

• Understand the cost of quality

• Focus on organizational influences and workplace

factors that affect quality

• Follow maturity models

 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.

*American Society for Quality (ASQ), (www.asqc.org/about/history/juran.html).

 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.
 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
 Maturity Models
• Maturity models are frameworks for helping
organizations improve their processes and systems.
• The Software Quality Function Deployment Model
focuses on defining user requirements and planning
software projects.

• The Software Engineering Institute’s Capability

Maturity Model Integration is a process
improvement approach that provides organizations
with the essential elements of effective processes.
 Tools and Techniques For Quality
Control
Software to Assist in Project Quality Management
• Spreadsheet and charting software helps create
Pareto diagrams, fishbone diagrams, and so on.
• Statistical software packages help perform statistical
analysis.
• Specialized software products help manage Six
Sigma projects or create quality control charts.
• Project management software helps create Gantt
charts and other tools to help plan and track work
related to quality management.