Total quality management vital for project success

throughout the life cycle of the project – a quality process delivering a quality outcome.
However, achieving project quality calls for hard work especially in a volatile project environment where there are divergent needs among stakeholders. There are no ready project quality cookbooks, no microwave oven, no magic formula, no plug-and-play and no instant pudding, but investment in planning, tracking and controlling project quality metrics is of paramount importance. So where does a project manager go for guidance on how to integrate quality into project implementation?
Many approaches to quality management exist. Taking a broader view, the PMBOK Guide describes three elements of quality management: quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control. The Juran Trilogy describes three slightly different elements: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. Juran’s view includes assurance and control activities within quality control. It also adds the essential element of quality improvement, which the PMBOK Guide does not include as a distinct process.
The contemporary approach combines the best out of these two views to include quality planning, quality assurance, quality control, and quality improvement. Before we discuss each of these project quality processes, let us examine the different dimensions or levels the project manager must understand to implement a broad project quality management programme to the entire project from top to bottom.
Project Quality Dimensions
Quality at the business level – means defining project results that, when delivered, will offer the greatest possible value to the customer and to your own company. Every project team member, in making the small decisions that come up in interpreting any specification, should ask: “What will work best for the customer?” If it is affordable, we talk to the customers and get their answer to those questions as we start each piece of work or discover each issue.
Quality at the project level: This entails working in the most efficient and effective ways on the project. The use of company project forms and templates will ensure a consistent and persistent approach to project implementation. Checklists and project reviews are also used as these turn action plans into active checks that ensure that people on the project can actually check off work as it is done.
Quality at the technical level: This requires the delivery of the right thing, in working order and on time. Have you ever had a friendly, efficient company receive your order, then deliver a product right on time – but it is not what you ordered, it is something else entirely? Not much good, is it? That is what will happen on your project if you do good quality work at the business and project levels, but not at the technical level. This calls for inspection and verification of project products with the motivation to take corrective and preventive actions.
The project manager must understand that there are always errors on projects, but the question is “Do you want your project team members to find them so that you can fix them or do you want the customer to find them”. Food for thought.
Having grasped the project quality dimensions, let us turn to a systematic approach of managing project quality.
Project Quality Planning
The PMBOK Guide defines quality planning as ” . . . identifying which quality standards are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them”. This activity is the foundation for quality being planned in, not inspected in. Project managers need not, and must not, depend on inspection and correction to achieve project quality. Instead, they should use conformance and prevention to achieve quality. Project managers should, through planning, design in and build in quality. This necessitates treating project customers as the base element in terms of quality provision.
Although project stakeholders are numerous on projects, at the quality planning stage there is need for prioritisation of the customers in terms of their requirements. These requirements are then turned into specifications and standards are then set to capture how the specifications are to be achieved.
Quality at the project level can be planned to meet the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) standards. Note that the organisation’s short title “ISO” is not a fractured acronym, but rather an adaptation of the Greek word isos, which translates to English as “equal”, meaning equal interpretation of quality among the project team members in terms of previously agreed project implementation practices.
Project Quality Assurance
The PMBOK Guide defines quality assurance as “. . . the application of planned, systematic quality activities to ensure that the project will employ all processes needed to meet requirements”. This logically follows quality planning, as the processes employed must satisfy the standards that were identified during the quality planning process.
There is often confusion between the use of the terms quality assurance and quality control (to be discussed next), however in brief, quality assurance addresses the programme; it is the combined set of activities that the project team will perform to meet project objectives. Quality control addresses the outcomes; it is monitoring performance and doing something about the results.
The primary mechanism for determining the effectiveness of quality assurance activities on a project is the quality audit. A quality audit is a structured, independent review to determine whether project activities comply with organisational and project policies, processes, and procedures. The audit may use results obtained from quality control to determine if quality assurance activities are having the desired result. If results do not show conformance to specification, quality assurance activities should be reviewed and improved.
Project Quality Control
The PMBOK Guide defines quality control as “. . . monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance”. This is an action process in which the project team looks at results and determines necessary corrective action. It must be noted that quality control is a fairly mature discipline with numerous tools and techniques at the disposal of the project manager.
Project Quality Improvement
Juran defines quality improvement as “. . . the organised creation of beneficial change; the attainment of unprecedented levels of performance . . . breakthrough”. Quality improvement is a deliberate process that uses objective measurement and data.
All quality improvement begins with data collection of all project quality issues, including the skills profile of the project team. In the quest of continuous improvement, training the project team members is a worthwhile investment. Training is the foundation and fountain of quality necessary to exhibit leadership on projects.
Leadership is the unifying force of quality. The goals of leadership are to improve performance and quality, increase output, and bring pride of workmanship to people. Leadership is necessary to eliminate the causes of defects, not just the defects alone on projects
All these project quality management processes discussed in this article come with costs. In a subsequent article I will explore the different categories of project quality management costs as some are regarded as investment with corresponding spin-offs!
l Robert Taruwona is the president of the Project Management Institute of Zimbabwe (PMIZ). Send your views and comments via email: [email protected]; website link www.pmiz.org.zw