Plan Quality Management

Overview

Plan Quality Management is a process to identify relevant organizational or industry practices, standards, and requirements for the quality of the project and its product, and then plan how to meet those standards. The main output is a quality management plan. Quality efforts should be tailored to the project's needs and balanced with other constraints, such as time and cost. Standards may come from internal organizational policies or external sources like ISO 9000, OSHA, or the United Nations Convention on Contracts for International Sale of Goods (CISG).

Practical Example

A construction company could establish a standardized practice for kitchen installations. By compiling best practices from installers, the company improves quality, safety, and efficiency. Each project team tailors these standards to their specific project, ensuring consistency and adaptability.

Creating the Quality Management Plan

When planning quality management, consider:

• OPAs: Use organizational process assets to identify standards, policies, and lessons learned.
• Project-Specific Standards: Define how quality is measured for each deliverable.
• Customer Standards: Incorporate standards from contracts or requirements gathering.
• Management Plans: Utilize stakeholder engagement plans, risk thresholds, and scope baselines.

Key documents include the stakeholder register, requirements traceability matrix, and assumption log to ensure quality aligns with project goals.

Artifacts of Plan Quality Management

The quality management plan includes standard practices, roles, responsibilities, and metrics. It also involves updates to:

• Scope baseline
• Risk register
• Requirements traceability matrix
• Project activity list and schedule

Quality Metrics

Metrics help measure project performance against the plan. Examples include:

• Number of changes
• Resource utilization variance
• Number of failed inspections
• Product weight variance
• Software bugs per module

Manage Quality

This process ensures project work adheres to the quality management plan. A quality department often assists, preparing test and evaluation documents for Control Quality. Key questions include:

• Are processes followed as planned?
• Are quality requirements met?
• Can processes be improved?

Artifacts include test documents, quality reports, and updates to the requirements traceability matrix.

Control Quality

Control Quality measures whether deliverables meet requirements. Inputs include deliverables, test documents, and quality metrics. Artifacts include verified deliverables, work performance information, and change requests. Key terms include:

• Mutual Exclusivity: Events that cannot occur simultaneously.
• Probability: Likelihood of an event, expressed as a fraction or decimal.
• Normal Distribution: A bell curve showing variations from the norm.
• Standard Deviation: Measures how far a value is from the mean.

Quality Management Methods

Methods for planning quality include:

• Interviews & Brainstorming: Identify metrics and processes.
• Benchmarking: Compare with other projects or organizations.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis: Evaluate quality efforts versus costs.
• Multicriteria Decision Analysis: Score factors to prioritize quality requirements.