Quality Control in Project Management
“The Pertinent Question is NOT how to do things right — but how to find the right things to do, and to concentrate resources and efforts on them.” –Peter Drucker
A key process in the delivery of a quality project is that of quality control. Quality control is the process of ensuring that the project deliverables meet the defined project standards by measuring, evaluating and correcting project outputs.
The quality control process includes measuring, evaluating, correcting and report of project errors. The project errors can include defects in materials, poor construction or unsatisfactory service. The goal of quality control in project management is to keep the variance in of the deliverables within the accepted limits (Tayntor, 2010).
Quality control is related to, but different from quality assurance. Were quality assurance is focused on preventing project shortcomings and defects, quality control is concerned with detecting and correcting defects in the project outputs. Quality Assurance and quality control are often conducted by the same personnel in project, depending on the size of the project team.
Even with the most rigorous of quality assurance processing in place, the highest quality materials, the best trained project staff; errors and defects will occur in a project. Without a proper quality control program in place it will not be possible to find and correct. Even if a project is delivered on time and within budget, it may be considered unacceptable if it fails to meet quality standards. Quality control will keep the mistakes out of the hands of the customers (Phillips, 2008).
Quality control in project management consists of four elements, measurements, evaluations, co...
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...vidual work items, such a subsection of a building or it can be the analysis of an entire process.
Potential downfalls in quality control are incomplete testing and utilizing the wrong measurement. If the project processes and deliverable that are subject to quality control are not all inclusive defects will escape detection and correction. It is through the application of a rigorous quality control program that is avoided.
Using the wrong measurements to assess project quality had a doubled impact on quality control. By using the wrong measurements, defects will be left undetected and make to the clients. Additional, the time spend taking the wrong measurements will have an impact on the project times.
In order to deal with these quality challenges a project team should have a formalized quality control procedure and dedicated quality control team members.
Quality Assurance System is a set of principles and procedures in which it is to keep the manufactured products from mistakes and defects. It can also be called as a defect prevention. Its focus is not only on the products but on the services on the company, businesses or organization as well.
The book outlines the important steps that make up the Quality Improvement (QI) processes. First you must identify the needs that are most important. Second a multidisciplinary team must be put together to review the needs that have been identified. Third data must be collected to assess the current situation being evaluated. The fourth step should be to create goals and quality indicators that can be assessed and evaluated. The fifth step is where you develop and place into practice the plan to achieve the desired outcome/ goals. Lastly data must be collected to assess the effectiveness in the change of practice, and to see of all goals have been met.
In today's business it is in the best interest of companies to have project managers. Common sense isn't always easily accomplished. Anyone who's ever worked on a project in a technical setting knows this. Indeed, much of working with others consists of solving unexpected problems and learning from mistakes along the way. Knowing this and having the proper tools a project manager will be able to manage and complete the most intense project out there.
Agile Project management is one of the industries dominating methodology for project management in IT. It is an incremental and iterative way to manage the build and design activities for constructing an IT product, services, and project development in manner which is highly interactive and flexible. In this methodology, scope is defined in granularity that is appropriate with time horizon and checked with the agreement on each feature with the customer. In this methodology work steps are divided with feature breakdown structures. In order to track the progress of the project progress charts are used instead of Gantt charts. Cross-functional and test-driven development teams starts working from the very beginning of the project to provide quality assurance and quality control till the completion. Process of finding and removing bugs is done through iterations and then present to the customer. With the help of Agile approach teams can easily address the core risks of the project throughout the course of development (Thummadi, 2012).
These procedures and practices are used both by GM and by their vendors. The policies vary from layered inspections, statistics, process failure modes, effects analysis and control plans (Drew, 2011). All quality measures produce a graded system of quality management utilizing quality tools. An example of quality control test is that of speedy response wherever dilemmas are resolved quickly and immediately throughout visual management. Individuals responsible for specific tasks are kept accountable for some corrective actions that may subsist. What General Motors did was ignore this quality measurement when it was dealing with the problems of the Chevrolet
Inputs to quality planning will include: the scope baseline, the individual project requirements that, when taken together, constitute the full project scope; the stakeholder register which identifies those individuals who will actively contribute to the execution of the QP and who therefore need to be involved in quality planning; cost and schedule baselines which have a cascading effect on project scope; and, the risk register, which details the areas of risk that are related to quality and that may affect the planning process. Finally, we will also integrate the tenets of our quality p...
In order to ensure quality, a continual quality process will be used throughout the project life cycle. This iterative process includes measuring process metrics, analyzing process data, and continuously improving the process.
How to manage quality control? I.e. avoiding a situation where contracts are just given to the cheapest bidder, rather than the best or most reliable worker.
Executive summary The definition of quality management is to make sure that the organizations’ products or services can be implemented smoothly. There are four essential parts, which consist of quality planning, controlling, assurance and improvement (Rose, Kenneth H, 2005). This report is going to adopt Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster as an example to illustrate the fundamental quality problem of the spacecraft. It is going to analyze the quality management problems NASA had by stating 5 “why” questions on what if NASA had precaution the tragedy would not have happened and carry on by using Ishikawa’s methodology to analyze the effect of the problem as well as the causes.
Project management is said to be completed within time when it completed within the “triple constraints”: cost, time and quality. And in a lot of causes, one them is sacrificed so as to meet the other two. Project managers prioritize which ones are the most important.
...ing low cost but reliable alternatives to expensive technology and building a culture for continuous improvement. Secondly, developing a culture that promotes high level of respect and morale, which eventually leads to a healthy work environment. When the work environment is cordial and friendly, all the different stakeholders will also interact with each other and work in a way that is best for the construction industry. Finally, most of the project delivery process should be transformed into Integrated Project Delivery processes so that they involve all the different stakeholders at vital phases of the project. This can form a solid foundation for a project and the chances of errors will be almost minimal or none.
The Quality control mechanism needs to identify the ability of parts in the space shuttle to face reactions from wind, humidity, temperature etc as well make sure the design measures are 100% accurate and the necessary resources are allocated in the designing process to achieve optimum quality in design and should always try to be proactive rather than being reactive which can reduce quality failure cost as well increase effectiveness of the design to face any vulnerabilities.
Quality is a very important thing in an organization; therefore it is not possible to improve the quality of a product or service substantially without major changes in all aspects of the organization. Because quality is so important if changes aren’t made throughout the organization the output of the product will no be very successful. Everyone in the organization plays a major role in the out come of its products.
Unexpected circumstances cannot be avoided, but they can be minimized with quality assurance and quality control. Quality assurance and quality control activities
Quality is a word which has been used for a very long time, lots of books have been written about it, and many of the world's scientists have defined it in many different ways. In this research paper, I will emphasise the Quality Management System, why is it important? What is it used for? What is the importance of having a Quality Management System? Many people think implementing QMS costs a lot and all the benefit is a piece of paper which says that your company is certified in having QMS.