The Quality Management Plan outlines how selected quality policies will be implemented for a certain project. It’s part of the Project Management Plan. The Plan Quality process described in the fourth edition PMBOK® decides which quality requirements and standards should apply to the project and then develops the Quality Management Plan to assure compliance with them. The formality and level of detail of the plan varies across projects. The other two quality processes—Perform Quality Assurance and Perform Quality Control—are guided by this plan. Quality and Risk are closely tied together. The Quality Management Plan is used as an input to the Identify Risks process, because the approach to quality will increase or decrease overall risk. And when performing the Plan Risk Responses process, the plan may be updated to reflect changes in how risk will be addressed. In the course of doing the project work and monitoring its progress, the two processes Direct and Manage Project Execution and Monitor and Control Project Work, can additionally lead to revisions to the Quality Management Plan. Also see the earlier posting of Plan Quality Process (posted March 19, 2009).
June 10, 2009
March 23, 2009
Cost of Quality
How much should be invested in quality efforts? Cost of Quality is a tool and technique of the fourth edition PMBOK®’s Plan Quality process. These are the expenses associated with the investment to make a quality product and the costs of failing to meet quality standards. Cost of Quality is broken down into these two major categories which are called the Cost of Conformance and the Cost of Nonconformance. The Cost of Conformance may be further broken down into Prevention Costs and Appraisal Costs. Prevention Costs represent the investment of keeping the defects from happening at all. This could include extra training for staff members and sophisticated equipment that accurately assembles a product. Appraisal Costs are the expenses of checking the product in order to find any defects that may have occurred. This could include visually inspecting the product, turning the product on to see if it works, and using equipment that detects products that are not within the set parameters. The Cost of Nonconformance may also be broken down into two categories—Internal Failure Costs and External Failure Costs. If a defective product is discovered in-house before being sent to the customer, the costs of scrapping or re-doing the product are Internal Failure Costs. If the product is sold to the customer, the costs of handling returns, complaints, lawsuits, and lost business are called External Failure Costs.
March 19, 2009
Plan Quality Process
Plan Quality is one of the 42 project management processes described in the fourth edition PMBOK®. It’s one of the three Quality area processes, and one of the twenty Planning processes—which should not be difficult to remember with its name. The purpose of this process is to decide what quality requirements and standards should apply to the project and develop a plan (Quality Management Plan) to assure compliance with them. The Scope Baseline includes acceptance criteria for the project which is especially useful in the development of the Quality Management Plan.
The quality processes contain many tools and techniques. In fact, after listing Cost-Benefit Analysis, Cost of Quality, Control Charts, Benchmarking, Design of Experiments, Statistical Sampling, Flowcharting, and Proprietary Quality Management Methodologies as tools and techniques of this process, “Additional Quality Planning Tools” is listed. See earlier posting of Control Chart (posted February 17, 2009). The Cost of Quality technique examines costs of conformance (prevention and appraisal costs) and nonconformance (internal and external failure costs). The primary output of this process is the Quality Management Plan, which describes how the conformance to the selected quality standards will occur. The Quality Management Plan is then used to guide the other two quality processes—Perform Quality Assurance and Perform Quality Control.
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