As a Project Manager, you have many concerns working in your mind and you have plans to deal with them. There is the project plan that acts as a guide throughout the project. It covers almost everything pertaining to the project from resource planning to scheduling to deadlines and milestones. But there is one thing that is lost in the whirlpool of the project plan. That is quality, which is as important. The significance of quality in Project Management can not be emphasized enough. You may have the best project planning software, and you may have reached every milestone, completed every schedule, and delivered the project under the allocated budget. Kudos for that!! 

But if the deliverables don't meet the set project quality norms, then all this comes to naught. Efficacious Project Management entails that the team delivers quality products or services. That is why so much importance is attached to Project Quality Management. In fact, the concept of quality in Project Management had come into being as early as the 80s and 90s. But today, Project Management is totally driven by quality. All the stakeholders and customers don't want just the project to be delivered on time and within budget, but they want a quality project to be delivered. Today, a large number of companies are investing in quality management professionals to make sure that the project delivered is a quality project.

Let us first understand Project Quality Management.

What is Project Quality Management?

As is pretty obvious from the name, it is all about managing the quality. In the context of Project Management, achieving the desired quality is the objective. So, Project Quality Management is the process to make sure that all the project-related activities are performing effectively and efficiently in relation to the project objectives. It is a set of processes and activities to understand the deliverables of the project and achieve them as per the set quality standards. The quality of the project is maintained throughout the project with the help of these processes and activities. Here, quality may be confused with perfection. But that is not the case. It is about maintaining consistency of quality throughout the project. However, what counts as quality is decided by and depends on the stakeholders and customers and what they want from the project. Organizational values and standards also decide the quality norms sometimes. Therefore, the meaning of quality may vary from project to project. But one common thing is that it consists of a process to continuously measure or evaluate the quality of all the project activities against the set norms and take corrective actions wherever needed to achieve the desired quality. Today, Project Management and quality management complement each other. The Project Quality Management processes offer the approach to establishing standards and ways to achieve and corroborate those standards. 

Project Quality Management consists of processes and activities that define the quality policies and objectives, and responsibilities of the project so that the project meets the requirements for which it is being executed. These processes and activities are used to implement the quality management systems of the organization in the context of the project. 

What is the purpose of Project Quality Management?

The responsibility of implementing the quality management plan lies on the shoulders of the Project Manager. The main purpose of Project Quality Management is to meet the specifications laid down by the stakeholders and customers. It is to ensure that the expectations of customers and other stakeholders are being fulfilled. But for achieving this, you must have an understanding of the Project Quality Management concepts. There are three such concepts are described below.

Customer satisfaction:

Satisfying the customer is always the prime objective of every project. And delivering the quality desired by the customer is a crucial part of customer satisfaction. As mentioned earlier also, even if all the deliverables are met but the final quality is not as per the customer's specifications or standards, there will be problems. Quality is all about fulfilling the customer's aspirations and expectations and building a product that meets the customer's requirements and can be used for the purpose for which it has been created. There is no doubt that the delivered project must match the requirements otherwise the project would be considered a failure and this is precisely the reason managing quality includes both people and processes. Regular and constant interaction with the customer and the stakeholders and getting their feedback would go a long way in mitigating the issues that may come up later on and it will no doubt raise the level of customer satisfaction.

Prevention over inspection:

The best way of achieving quality is by building it into the product, service, or process right from the initiation. So, the quality should be planned and designed right in the beginning. There is always a cost attached to quality. This is of two types - the cost of conformance and the cost of non-conformance. The cost of conformance is a kind of preventive cost. This cost is incurred on training the people on quality aspects, getting the equipment required for maintaining and monitoring quality, and the time that would go into ensuring quality. The nonconformance cost includes the cost of any rework done or any rejections. More costs can come in the form of losing the business if the quality standards are not met or maintained. Therefore, it is always better to plan and build quality right into processes or products instead of inspecting them later.

Continuous improvement:

This concept of Project Quality Management rests on continuously making efforts to tackle improvements required in deliverables during the course of the project. There is always an opportunity to make small or large changes that could lead to improvement in processes or overall product. This would involve constant monitoring and documenting the deviation observed and corrections made thereof so that these can be used for any issues that could come up in the future. With this approach, the efficiency of the project increases, and you are saved from repeating mistakes.

Different phases in Project Quality Management:

Now that you have understood the three concepts of Project Quality Management, now you can implement the project quality plan. Every Project Manager would want to build the best possible product or service but without an appropriate Project Quality Management plan, the most skilled people with the best tools and equipment may not succeed. So, there are three steps described below which are three phases of building the quality into the process, product, or service right from its inception and ensuring that the customer and stakeholder expectations are met. Here are the three processes of Project Quality Management.

Planning Project Quality Management:

The first process is to identify the requirements of quality and its standards for the deliverables of the project and how it is to be managed. A plan is created for this purpose. The project quality plan contains the objectives desired to be achieved for the project. These quality objectives should be clearly made known to all the stakeholders. This will act as a guide and will provide direction on how the quality is to be managed and validated till the completion of the project. The method of documenting the process and the way of communicating the information is agreed upon. How the required standards would be ensured is worked out. Here, care should be taken to take into consideration the quality expectations of the stakeholders. Then the right tasks are assigned to the right people. Thus, the project quality plan is initiated.

Quality assurance:

This is one process that continues all through the project lifecycle. As the name suggests, this process makes sure that quality is maintained throughout the project. The process contains certain planned and structured activities that ensure that the quality requirements are being met. Quality assurance is a kind of proof to the stakeholders that all the activities related to quality are being carried out as defined and committed. It is a surety that all the expectations regarding quality would be fulfilled and safeguards have been provided to ensure this. The purpose of quality assurance is to continuously evaluate if the project is rightly progressing toward the desired quality standards. Quality assurance is done not to the product or service delivered by the project but to those processes also which are used for executing and managing the project. Two ways of doing this are through a project checklist or a project audit. A system of metrics is put in place to analyze if the quality management plan is moving in the right direction and if the quality is being maintained within the set parameters. The tests or quality audits thus carried out help in verifying if the goals and milestones are being achieved and identify if there are any corrective actions needed to be taken.

Quality control:

To run a process smoothly, an enforcer is always needed that ensures that the standards are being followed and the desired quality is being achieved. Quality control does precisely that. Here, operational techniques are used to ensure that quality standards are being achieved. In quality control, problems related to quality are identified, analyzed, and corrected. The difference between quality assurance and quality control is that while quality assurance takes place before the occurrence of a problem, quality control comes into the picture once a problem has been identified and offers ways of correcting it. If the Project Quality Management plan is not being carried out in the way it should be, corrective measures come into action. The aim of quality control is to monitor the specific outputs of the project and ensure compliance with the set quality standards. Quality control also finds out the risk factors in the project and the ways to mitigate them. Project quality monitoring can be done through peer reviews and testing. 

Quality is one of the most important aspects of any project. This is particularly vital in today's scenario of tough competition, dynamic market conditions, and rapid developments. And Project Quality Management if done in the right manner, can not only deliver quality products but will lead to higher customer satisfaction. It also enhances the productivity of the team and all this results in financial gains for reorganization. But what is important here is to use the proper tools for quality management. By adopting the Project Quality Management concepts, you can create a robust project quality plan and by adhering to the three processes of Project Quality Management, you can meet the expectations of the stakeholders and deliver a quality project. 

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