CHAPTER 7
Summary and Challenges
Project quality management truly is the merging of the two fields of project management and quality management. It is more than a knowledge area in project management and more than a means of better planning and managing improvement projects in quality. It is the systematic adaptation and use of quality tools and knowledge to meet the unique needs of projects.
The four project quality pillars of customer satisfaction, process improvement, fact-based management, and empowered performance are useful for structuring the activities and tools treated in each stage of the five-stage project quality process model: project quality initiation, project quality planning, project quality assurance, project quality control, and project quality closure. The structure of this dual field integration is summarized in the integrated project quality activity matrix presented as Figure 7-1.
While all of the activities shown in FIGURE 7-1 should be performed at some level (they can be streamlined on easy projects and may be very involved on difficult projects), some pose core project quality management challenges. The challenges arise either because these are unfamiliar activities that are not performed often in many organizations, because they are only partly performed, or because they are difficult to accomplish in and of themselves. In any event, many people do not realize the significance of each of these activities.
Each of these activities is important because the output is essential to project success. Some are also important because other essential activities depend on them. For example, in project quality initiation, the identification and prioritization of customer expectations is a core project quality management challenge both for its own sake and because the next crucial activity (align project with organizational objectives) depends on it. If more people would realize the unique challenges posed by the core project quality management activities, more project participants would accomplish these activities and, in turn, more projects would be successful.
FIGURE 7-1 Integrated Project Quality Activity Matrix
The core project quality management challenges are shown in bold face type in Figure 7-1. The remainder of this chapter identifies and describes these core challenges by project stage.
PROJECT QUALITY INTITIATION CORE CHALLENGES
The five activities singled out as core challenges during project quality initiation are: assign sponsor, identify and prioritize customer expectations, identify risks and assumptions, identify previous lessons learned to be used on this project, and formally commit to the project.
The selection of a project sponsor is a core challenge. The sponsor is usually a high-level executive who does not have enough time to manage the project, but who has a strong vested interest in having the project reach a successful conclusion. The sponsor has several important project responsibilities, as shown in Figure 1-3, Project Lifecycle Accountability Matrix. A project will have a much better chance of success if a capable individual is assigned as a sponsor and is instructed regarding his or her project responsibilities.
The second core challenge during project quality initiation is to identify and prioritize customer expectations. The very reason for conducting a project is because some customer needs the project deliverables. Often in the eagerness to secure a contract, organizations perform this step inadequately and end up with a project that either is a poor fit or is planned poorly. While those are additional steps, performing them correctly depends on a good understanding of customer expectations.
The third core challenge during project quality initiation is to identify assumptions and risks. People from different work fields or different companies will approach a project with different unspoken assumptions. Moreover, many people tacitly assume that everyone interprets things the same way they do; this is often a faulty assumption that can lead to miscommunication and disappointment. Many risk events can be predicted. If risks are identified in advance and contingency plans are made, the effect on project quality is likely to be far less.
The fourth core challenge during project quality initiation is to identify lessons learned from previous projects that should be applied to the current project. While many organizations have come a long way in identifying lessons learned, they need to “close the loop” to benefit from them. A wise sponsor should not sign a project charter until the core team demonstrates that they have considered lessons learned from recently completed projects and found ways to incorporate that learning into the approach for the current project.
The final core challenge during project quality initiation is to have the project sponsor, project manager, and each member of the project core team personally commit to the project. This is normally accomplished through signing a project charter. The charter does not have to be detailed, but it does need to lay out some basic understandings and it does need to be considered a contract. When the sponsor, manager, and core team are all deeply and personally committed to accomplishing a project, it is more likely to be successful.
PROJECT QUALITY PLANNING CORE CHALLENGES
The five activities that pose core challenges during project quality planning are: determine customer satisfaction standards, determine customer tradeoff values, assess and prioritize improvement needs, have core team commit to the project plan, and have all key stakeholders commit to the project plan.
The first core challenge is to determine customer satisfaction standards. This activity is core because it is how the customers will judge whether the project deliverables are of acceptable quality. How can a project team expect to create good quality deliverables if they do not understand how the customer will judge the deliverables? This knowledge should form the basis of all the detailed planning that follows.
The second core challenge is to determine customer tradeoff values. To capture the customer’s tradeoff values when the customer may not even fully know his or her values and may be unwilling to share them with the project manager requires some frank discussion. Unexpected events occur on most projects and understanding how the customer would make decisions regarding trading off a little of one project objective to gain more of another will enable the project manager and project team members to align their priorities with those of the customer.
The third core challenge during project quality planning is to develop the project quality management plan. This master plan links all prioritized process needs (including those that need to be created or improved) and resource requirements to the strategic priorities of both the project and the parent organization. This linkage enables all project participants to have clear goals, develop detailed responsibilities, and avoid suboptimization.
The fourth core challenge during project quality planning is for the core team to commit to the project plan. The core team members already committed to the project when they signed the charter. However, the charter was broad and the plan is much more detailed. Each member must be committed to the detailed approach that is now delineated.
The fifth core challenge during project quality planning is for all key project stakeholders to commit to the project plan. If the core team has not truly committed to the plan, this step will be very difficult. Key project stakeholders include internal and external direct purchasers, consumers, and providers. If any of these groups are not fully committed to the project, there is a greater chance of failure. Additionally, there are many other peripheral stakeholders who could disrupt the project. Ensuring that each of them understands the project and agrees with its goals (at least well enough not to attempt to interfere) is important.
PROJECT QUALITY ASSURANCE CORE CHALLENGES
The five core challenges during project quality assurance are: manage external customer quality assurance, manage internal customer quality assurance, perform ongoing review of process adequacy, conduct and report results of quality audits, and manage feedback changes.
The first core challenge is managing external customer quality assurance. This entails ongoing two-way communication between members of the project team and the customer. The purpose is to continuously convince all people in the customer organization that the project team members know what they are doing and will deliver results that will be useful to the customer.
The second core challenge is managing internal customer quality assurance. This includes ensuring that the project work is meaningful, workers are satisfied, and work systems are improving. On projects in which these activities occur, the organization gets stronger and its customers are better served.
The third core challenge in project quality assurance is conducting an ongoing review of project process adequacy. Figure 4-2, Project Quality Assurance Flowchart, shows eight in or out arrows connecting this activity with others. A great deal of information needs to be analyzed to ensure that work processes are still adequate. Many other downstream activities depend on the comprehensiveness and accuracy of that ongoing review.
The fourth core challenge in project quality assurance is conducting and reviewing the results of quality audits. The purposes of an audit are to ensure that everything is going according to plan and to suggest possible improvements. Audits can be viewed as a nuisance to be endured or as an asset to help make improvements. A prudent project manager takes the latter view.
The final core challenge in project quality assurance is to manage feedback changes. Projects encounter many changes for a variety of reasons. The important tasks to accomplish from a quality perspective are to identify possible changes, evaluate whether to implement them, and keep track of them. While most people understand the importance of those three tasks, when there is a great deal of time pressure, it is easy to lose discipline in this area. The key to accomplishing these three tasks is to make them simple so people will believe that the benefit of doing them outweighs the effort required.
PROJECT QUALITY CONTROL CORE CHALLENGES
The five core challenges during project quality control are: controlling project processes, approximating Six Sigma standards, using test results to correct deficiencies, having the project team endorse the deliverables, and having the customer accept the deliverables.
Controlling project processes is important because one of the key learnings from the TQM movement of the 1980s and 1990s is that quality cannot be inspected into products and services. Instead, quality must be designed and built in. Therefore, it is much more effective to control work processes so that the work is performed correctly the first time than it is to inspect afterward. Inspections do not find every defect and they take time and money—two commodities that are in short supply on most projects.
The second core challenge is to approximate Six Sigma standards. Many projects do not have enough repetition to document Six Sigma level quality, but the methods used to attain Six Sigma—identifying every opportunity for failure, assigning metrics to each, gathering data, analyzing root causes of problems, and gaining a firm commitment to produce as close to zero defects as possible—help enable a project team to produce as high quality a project as possible.
The third core challenge is to use test results to correct any defects. When things go wrong on projects, it is very tempting to guess the reason why and to “fix” it right away. There is often substantial time pressure. If a project uses good metrics, it should not take much longer to obtain the results of tests so the “fix” chosen is based on a combination of current data and the decision-maker’s judgment rather than a rushed decision based solely on judgment. These databased decisions are more likely to be correct.
The fourth core challenge is for the project team to endorse the deliverables. If the project team members are to convince the customer that the deliverables are correct and complete, they need to believe it themselves. If there is a problem with any aspect of the deliverables, the team should discover it and correct it before trying to get the customer to concur.
The final core challenge in quality control is to have the customer formally accept the deliverables. This should be accomplished with truly satisfactory deliverables, and not under so much time pressure that the customer feels compelled to take imperfect deliverables. If the deliverables are complete and satisfactory, the customer can be an advocate for the project team in the future; if the deliverables are substandard, the customer can be a threat to the project team for future projects.
PROJECT QUALITY CLOSURE CORE CHALLENGES
Closure is considered an afterthought on too many projects. Often by the time a project is nearing completion, the participants have many other demands on their time and it is tempting to shortchange some of the project completion activities. Don’t make this mistake! Core project quality closure challenges are: enabling customer capability; assessing the overall quality of all project processes; collecting, sharing, and documenting project lessons learned; recognizing and rewarding project participants; and obtaining referrals from capable and satisfied customers.
One of the most frequently overlooked activities during project quality closure is enabling customer capability. It is tempting to say “we know that the deliverables met the specifications and the customer was happy, so we are done.” But you are not done until customers have had a chance to use the project deliverables under the entire range of operating conditions to verify their capability in using the deliverables without further training or support. Even if the customer has no money or desire to fund the training and support, the quality project organization will at least recommend to the customer the training and support they feel are needed.
Often the customer may need support and training for the useful life of the project deliverable. In these cases, the project of creating the deliverable needs to be declared complete at some point and a transition plan to the ongoing support and training needs to be developed and agreed to. What a project team does not want to happen is to complete the project, but have the customer feel it is poor quality because the training and support to fully use the project deliverable are not provided.
The second core challenge during project closure is assessing project work processes. Was each process effective (accomplishing what it was designed to), efficient (using no more time or resources than necessary), and adaptable (performing satisfactorily as project conditions changed)?
The third core challenge during project quality closure is to collect, share, and document all the lessons learned from the entire project. This can be simplified if the project team collects lessons learned at the end of each project stage. Collecting the lessons is only part of what is required. Categorizing the lessons, understanding how they all relate to each other, and ensuring that they are used in the future instead of merely sitting in a database somewhere are the other tasks that need to be accomplished to close the loop. Just as identifying lessons learned from previous projects is a challenge during project quality initiation, discovering how to ensure that future projects will benefit from the lessons learned on the current project is a challenge at project quality closure. The alternative is to keep relearning the same lessons.
The fourth core challenge is to recognize and reward project participants. Project participants need to be evaluated (preferably by several people who each worked with the participants on the project). Rewards and recognition should be given based on project performance. This includes both formal and informal recognition. First, there is a fairness issue of taking care of people who deserve it. Second, there is the motivational issue of people being willing to work harder if they feel they will be rewarded. A fair and caring project sponsor or project manager will have no trouble recruiting good, willing participants on future projects.
The final core challenge during project closure is obtaining referrals from satisfied, capable customers. One final measure of project quality is if the customer is willing to commit to future projects and to encourage others to do so as well. Only a satisfied and capable customer who is successfully using the project deliverables in his or her own business will be willing to do this. The reward is continuing, profitable business for the project organization.