Quality and change in project

management

There is nothing permanent except change

 SIM335 Managing Projects
 Essential Reading
 Pinto, J.K. (2013) Project Management A Competitive Advantage. 3nd Ed.
London: Pearson Education Limited (pp. 399-420)
 Additional Reading:
 Maylor, H (2010) Project management 4th Ed. Edinburgh: Pearson
Education Ltd. (pp.242-259)
 Schwalbe K. (2009) An Introduction to Project Management 2nd Ed.
Boston: Cengage Learning (pp.225-233)
Unit learning objectives
On completing this unit, you should be able to:
 Identify the different quality measures that may be used
by participants in a project.
 Explain quality monitoring and variance reporting in
projects.
 Identify some of the issues that support configuration
management in projects and the issues and implications
that can develop.
Prior knowledge & Resources
 No other prior knowledge or experience is required,
although any knowledge or experience of quality
management or change management, in any context (not
just projects) would be helpful.

 The core text for this unit is Pinto (2013). It should be

referred to throughout the unit and specific further
readings are suggested in the text.
Project quality measures
 Project scope:

‘The processes required to ensure that the

project includes all the work required, and only the
work required, to complete the project successfully.
It is primarily concerned with defining and
controlling what is or is not included in the project.’
(Burke, 2003)
Project scope:
Burke (2003) goes on to highlight what the essence of scope
management is all about:
‘Scope management takes on a greater importance to avoid
scope creep, and avoiding adding features and
functionality to the product that were not part of the
original project contract without an appropriate increase
in time and budget’.
 To effectively manage scope, quality standards must be
defined in the project scope statement.
Controlling Scope & Quality
In practice, you need to ask yourself the following questions when
controlling scope and quality:
 Is the specification, as per the scope statement, being met?
 How does performance compare with the scope statement?
 How does analysis of variances compare to determine impact
against scope and quality?

You also need to:

 Publish reports that detail where the project is meeting or not
meeting specification.
 Take corrective action to act on scope deviations quickly.
 Quality Management
Quality management is the processes which ensure the
project will satisfy the needs for which it is undertaken by
addressing the management of the project and the product
of the project.

 One important document is the project quality plan. This is

a detailed document that explains how the company will
assure that the product will be made to the client’s
requirements.
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Standards in the ISO 9000 family
include:
 ISO 9000:2005 - covers the basic concepts/ fundamentals of
quality management systems
 ISO 9001:2008 - sets out the requirements of a quality
management system
 ISO 9004:2009 - focuses on how to make a quality
management system more efficient and effective
 ISO 19011:2011 - sets out guidance on internal and external
audits of quality management systems.
 ISO 14000 - Environmental management
(http://www.iso.org/iso/iso14000)
 ISO 27000: Information Security Management System
Activity
 We saw above that ISO 9000 has become an important
element in many organisations’ approach to quality
management.To find out more about ISO 9000:

 Go to the following website:

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_9000
 Scroll down to the section Preview ISO 9001:2008
 Click on ISO's Online Browsing Platform.
Prevention cost
 Prevention costs are those costs that are associated with
actions taken to make sure the product will be made to
the required standard: such things as reviewing and
verifying designs, quality training, quality planning,
quality improvement programmes and in-process control
engineering.
Project Quality Management Plan
 The Project Quality Management Plan is created during
the Planning Phase of the project.
 Intended audience is the project manager, project team,
project sponsor and any senior leaders whose
support is needed to carry out the plan.
Example
Consider the example, from Burke (2003), where a weld on
a steel fabrication project has been rejected. The additional
costs would include:

 quality raises a non-conformance report

 planning re-schedule the repair
 remove the weld and surface preparation
 re-weld
 quality check new weld.
Monitoring Quality
 Collecting information on project progress is a key task.
The data can be collected electronically, manually, by
onsite inspections and team meetings.

 This information should be compared with the project

plan to identify the variances. A variance exists when the
actual status does not match the planned status.
Variances
Not all variances will have a negative impact on the
project and not all variances will need corrective action.
It is the job of the project manager to determine:

 whether the variance has a significant impact on the

project
 whether the impact is a problem.
 whether the variance will cause other variances
elsewhere in the project.
Executing the start of the project
 Start the project off by holding a formal kick-off meeting
with all the key stakeholders involved in the project.
 Activities of the project manager during the project’s
execution (Field & Keller, 1998)

 Initiating.
 Planning, organizing and staffing.
 Monitoring and controlling.
 Directing.
 Communicating.
Controlling project objectives
 Time:
Time control is the process of comparing actual schedule
performance to the baseline schedule to determine
variances, evaluate possible alternatives and take
appropriate action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsNAx0zu3mY
Controlling project objectives
 Resource control:
 Resource control is the process of comparing actual
performance to the source plans to highlight variances
and determine appropriate action.

 Some methods used to control resources include:

 Team members should prepare individual plans for
accomplishing their work
 Empower team members to accomplish their tasks by giving
them appropriate authority and information.
Methods to control resource and
project objectives
 Inspection
include examining, testing and measuring whether activities are
progressing to schedule.
 Statistical Sampling
not practical to inspect every activity in the project so sometimes
principles of statistician sampling are applied to measure progress.
 Control Charts
show results along with established control limits.
help to check if the project, or an activity, is in control or in need of
adjustment.
Reporting on project objectives
 Reporting percent Complete
 reporting percent complete is sometimes more useful than
just reporting on how many units or hours have been
completed.

 Sample Reports
 designed to show senior management key information on
three aspects of the project objectives: cost, schedule and
scope.
Sample Report
Controlling changes in a project
 Throughout a project, events may happen that necessitate
minor or major changes to the plan.
 Most changes happen because of errors at the planning stage.
 Changes may also be brought on by external events (changes
such as government regulations, new technologies).
 Change control is needed to manage the potential effects on
the project.

Change control is often called configuration

management.
Change Control
Take the following actions to keep changes to projects under
control :
 Introduce a process for submitting, evaluating and approving
changes to the project plan.
 Review change requests with the project team.
 Look at other areas and courses of action and determine their
effect on the project.
 Approve or reject changes and communicate changes to all
concerned. Document and track changes, reporting their
effect in the project.
Change Request
Impact of Change Request
 This form looks at the impact of the changes on
the design team, cost impact, quality impact,
technical impact etc.
Gantt Chart
 F:\SIM 335_Top Up_Project Management\SIM335
Lecture\SIM335\MS-Project\Gantt Chart by MS
Project.mpp
Quality Control Tools
 Fishbone Diagrams
 Histograms
 Pareto Analysis
 Flowcharts
 Scatter Plots
 Run Charts
 Control Charts
Summary
 In this unit we have examined the processes for managing
quality and change in projects, not just as means of reacting
to events, but as systems for recognising quality and change
and managing them proactively.
References
 Burke, R. (2003) Project Management, Planning and Control
Techniques. Chichester:JohnWiley and Sons.
 Field, M., Keller, L. (2007) Project Management. South-
Western/Cengage &Open University
 Pinto, J.K. (2013) Project Management A Competitive
Advantage. 3nd Ed. London: Pearson Education Limited (pp.
399-420)
 Schwalbe K. (2009) An Introduction to Project Management
2nd Ed. Boston: Cengage Learning (pp.225-233)