Who’s Responsible for the Quality of Projects?

Project managers are ultimately responsible for quality management on their projects

Several organisations and references can help project managers and their teams understand quality

International Organisation for Standardisation (www.iso.org)

IEEE (www.ieee.org)

Performing Quality Assurance

Quality assurance includes all the activities related to satisfying the relevant quality standards for a project

Another goal of quality assurance is continuous quality improvement. Kaizen is the Japanese word for improvement or change for the better

Lean involves evaluating processes to maximise customer value while minimising waste

Benchmarking generates ideas for quality improvements by comparing specific project practices or product characteristics to those of other projects or products within or outside the performing organisation

A quality audit is a structured review of specific quality management activities that help identify lessons learned that could improve performance on current or future projects

What Went Right?

Kanban uses five core properties

Visual workflow

Limit work-in-process

Measure and manage flow

Make process policies explicit

Use models to recognise improvement opportunities

The application of Kanban is different for every team

Controlling Quality

The main outputs of quality control are:

Acceptance decisions

Rework

Process adjustments

There are some Basic Tools of Quality that help in performing quality control

Cause-and-Effect Diagrams

Cause-and-effect diagrams trace complaints about quality problems back to the responsible production operations

They help you find the root cause of a problem

Also known as fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams

Can also use the 5 whys technique where you repeated ask the question “Why” (five is a good rule of thumb) to peel away the layers of symptoms that can lead to the root cause

Figure 8-2. Sample Cause-and-Effect Diagram

Quality Control Charts

A control chart is a graphic display of data that illustrates the results of a process over time

The main use of control charts is to prevent defects, rather than to detect or reject them

Quality control charts allow you to determine whether a process is in control or out of control

When a process is in control, any variations in the results of the process are created by random events; processes that are in control do not need to be adjusted

When a process is out of control, variations in the results of the process are caused by non-random events; you need to identify the causes of those non-random events and adjust the process to correct or eliminate them

Checksheet

A checksheet is used to collect and analyse data

It is sometimes called a tally sheet or checklist, depending on its format

In the example in Figure 8-4, most complaints arrive via text message, and there are more complaints on Monday and Tuesday than on other days of the week

This information might be useful in improving the process for handling complaints

Day
Source	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
Email	III	IIII	I	II	I		I	12
Text	IIIII II	IIII	IIIII I	III	IIII	II	III	29
Phone call	I	II	I	I	II	I		8
Total	11	10	8	6	7	3	4	49

Scatter diagram

A scatter diagram helps to show if there is a relationship between two variables

The closer data points are to a diagonal line, the more closely the two variables are related

Figure 8-5. Sample Scatter Diagram

Histograms

A histogram is a bar graph of a distribution of variables

Each bar represents an attribute or characteristic of a problem or situation, and the height of the bar represents its frequency

Figure 8-6. Sample Histogram

Flowcharts

Flowcharts are graphic displays of the logic and flow of processes that help you analyze how problems occur and how processes can be improved

They show activities, decision points, and the order of how information is processed

Figure 8-8. Sample Flowchart

Run Charts

In addition to flowcharts, run charts are also used for stratification, a technique that shows data from a variety of sources to see if a pattern emerges

A run chart displays the history and pattern of variation of a process over time.

You can use run charts to perform trend analysis and forecast future outcomes based on historical results

Figure 8-9. Sample Run Chart

Statistical Sampling

Statistical sampling involves choosing part of a population of interest for inspection

The size of a sample depends on how representative you want the sample to be

Sample size formula:
Sample size = .25 X (certainty factor/acceptable error)2

Be sure to consult with an expert when using statistical analysis

Desired Certainty	Certainty Factor
95%	1.960
90%	1.645
80%	1.281

Table 8-1. Commonly Used Certainty Factors

Six Sigma

Six Sigma is “a comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining, and maximising business success. Six Sigma is uniquely driven by close understanding of customer needs, disciplined use of facts, data, and statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing, improving, and reinventing business processes”*

*Pande, Peter S., Robert P. Neuman, and Roland R. Cavanagh, The Six Sigma Way, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000, p. xi.

Basic Information on Six Sigma

The target for perfection is the achievement of no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities

The principles can apply to a wide variety of processes

Six Sigma projects normally follow a five-phase improvement process called DMAIC

DMAIC is a systematic, closed-loop process for continued improvement that is scientific and fact based

DMAIC stands for:

Define: Define the problem/opportunity, process, and customer requirements|

Measure: Define measures, then collect, compile, and display data

Analyse: Scrutinise process details to find improvement opportunities

Improve: Generate solutions and ideas for improving the problem

Control: Track and verify the stability of the improvements and the predictability of the solution

How is Six Sigma Quality Control Unique?

It requires an organization-wide commitment.

Training follows the “Belt” system

Six Sigma organizations have the ability and willingness to adopt contrary objectives, such as reducing errors and getting things done faster

It is an operating philosophy that is customer focused and strives to drive out waste, raise levels of quality, and improve financial performance at breakthrough levels

Six Sigma and Project Management

Joseph M. Juran stated, “All improvement takes place project by project, and in no other way”*

It’s important to select projects carefully and apply higher quality where it makes sense; companies that use Six Sigma do not always boost their stock values

Six Sigma projects must focus on a quality problem or gap between the current and desired performance and not have a clearly understood problem or a predetermined solution

*“What You Need to Know About Six Sigma,” Productivity Digest (December 2001), p. 38.

Six Sigma Projects Use Project Management

The training for Six Sigma includes many project management concepts, tools, and techniques

For example, Six Sigma projects often use business cases, project charters, schedules, budgets, and so on

Six Sigma projects are done in teams; the project manager is often called the team leader, and the sponsor is called the champion

Six Sigma and Statistics

The term sigma means standard deviation

Standard deviation measures how much variation exists in a distribution of data

Standard deviation is a key factor in determining the acceptable number of defective units found in a population

Six Sigma projects strive for no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities, yet this number is confusing to many statisticians

Six Sigma Uses a Conversion Table

Using a normal curve, if a process is at six sigma, there would be no more than two defective units per billion produced

Six Sigma uses a scoring system that accounts for time, an important factor in determining process variations

Yield represents the number of units handled correctly through the process steps

A defect is any instance where the product or service fails to meet customer requirements

There can be several opportunities to have a defect

Figure 8-10. Normal Distribution and Standard Deviation

Specification Range (in + Sigmas)	Precent of Population within Range	Defective Units per Billion
1	68.27	317,300,000
2	95.45	45,400,000
3	99.73	2,700,000
4	99.9937	63,000
5	99.999943	57
6	99.9999998	2

Table 8-2. Sigma and Defective Units

Sigma	Yield	Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO)
1	31.0%	690,000
2	69.2%	308,000
3	93.3%	66,800
4	99.4%	6,210
5	99.97%	230
6	99.99966%	3.4

Table 8-3: Sigma Conversion Table

Six 9s of Quality

Six 9s of quality is a measure of quality control equal to 1 fault in 1 million opportunities

In the telecommunications industry, it means 99.9999 percent service availability or 30 seconds of down time a year

This level of quality has also been stated as the target goal for the number of errors in a communications circuit, system failures, or errors in lines of code

Testing

Many IT professionals think of testing as a stage that comes near the end of IT product development

Testing should be done during almost every phase of the IT product development life cycle

Figure 8-11. Testing Tasks in the Software Development Life Cycle

Types of Tests

Unit testing tests each individual component (often a program) to ensure it is as defect-free as possible

Integration testing occurs between unit and system testing to test functionally grouped components

System testing tests the entire system as one entity

User acceptance testing is an independent test performed by end users prior to accepting the delivered system

Testing Alone Is Not Enough

Watts S. Humphrey, a renowned expert on software quality, defines a software defect as anything that must be changed before delivery of the program

Testing does not sufficiently prevent software defects because:

The number of ways to test a complex system is huge

Users will continue to invent new ways to use a system that its developers never considered

Humphrey suggests that people rethink the software development process to provide no potential defects when you enter system testing; developers must be responsible for providing error-free code at each stage of testing

Modern Quality Management

Modern quality management:

Requires customer satisfaction

Prefers prevention to inspection

Recognises management responsibility for quality

Noteworthy quality experts include Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, Taguchi, and Feigenbaum

ISO Standards

ISO 9000 is a quality system standard that:

Is a three-part, continuous cycle of planning, controlling, and documenting quality in an organisation

Provides minimum requirements needed for an organization to meet its quality certification standards

Helps organisations around the world reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction

See www.iso.org for more information

Global Issues

In 2015, 15 electric cars were introduced throughout the world

Driverless cars are also being tested

Google’s director of self-driving cars is striving to improve their quality to reduce accident rates

Improving Information Technology Project Quality

Several suggestions for improving quality for IT projects include:

Establish leadership that promotes quality

Understand the cost of quality

Focus on organisational influences and workplace factors that affect quality

Follow maturity models

Leadership

As Joseph M. Juran said in 1945, “It is most important that top management be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere manifestation of interest at the top, little will happen below”*

A large percentage of quality problems are associated with management, not technical issues.

*American Society for Quality (ASQ), (www.asqc.org/about/history/juran.html).

The Cost of Quality

The cost of quality is the cost of conformance plus the cost of nonconformance

Conformance means delivering products that meet requirements and fitness for use

Cost of nonconformance means taking responsibility for failures or not meeting quality expectations

A study reported that software bugs cost the U.S. economy $59.6 billion each year and that one third of the bugs could be eliminated by an improved testing infrastructure

Five Cost Categories Related to Quality

Prevention cost: Cost of planning and executing a project so it is error-free or within an acceptable error range

Appraisal cost: Cost of evaluating processes and their outputs to ensure quality

Internal failure cost: Cost incurred to correct an identified defect before the customer receives the product

External failure cost: Cost that relates to all errors not detected and corrected before delivery to the customer

Measurement and test equipment costs: Capital cost of equipment used to perform prevention and appraisal activities

Media Snapshot

Computer viruses and malware software have been a quality concern for years

In a new twist, consumers are now being warned that e-cigarettes can be bad for computers

Anything can infect your computer if it can be inserted into a USB port

Other consumer products like smart TVs can invade on privacy

Organisational Influences, Workplace Factors, and Quality

Study by DeMarco and Lister showed that organisational issues had a much greater influence on programmer productivity than the technical environment or programming languages

Programmer productivity varied by a factor of one to ten across organisations, but only by 21 percent within the same organisation

Study found no correlation between productivity and programming language, years of experience, or salary.

A dedicated workspace and a quiet work environment were key factors to improving programmer productivity

Expectations and Cultural Differences in Quality

Project managers must understand and manage stakeholder expectations.

Expectations also vary by:

Organisation’s culture

Geographic regions

Maturity Models

Maturity models are frameworks for helping organisations improve their processes and systems

The Software Quality Function Deployment Model focuses on defining user requirements and planning software projects

The Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration is a process improvement approach that provides organisations with the essential elements of effective processes

What is CMM

CMM (Capability Maturity Model)

It is a method to evaluate and measure the maturity of the software development process of an organisation.

The maturity of software development process measurement is on a scale of 1 to 5 level

The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) specifies an increasing series of levels of a software development organisation.

The higher the level, the better the software development process, hence reaching each level is an expensive and time-consuming process.

(data source: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/software_testing_dictionary/capability_maturity_model.htm)

What is Maturity?

The level 1 of maturity

CMM has 5 levels of maturity.

Level One :Initial

The software process is characterised as inconsistent, and occasionally even chaotic. Defined processes and standard practices that exist are abandoned during a crisis.

Success of the organisation majorly depends on an individual effort, talent, and heroics.

The heroes eventually move on to other organisations taking their wealth of knowledge or lessons learnt with them.

The level 2 of maturity

Level Two: Repeatable

This level of Software Development Organisation has a basic and consistent project management processes to track cost, schedule, and functionality.

The process is in place to repeat the earlier successes on projects with similar applications.

Program management is a key characteristic of a level two organisation.

The level 3 of maturity

Level Three: Defined

The software process for both management and engineering activities are documented, standardised, and integrated into a standard software process.

They are for the entire organisation and all projects across the organisation use an approved, tailored version of the organisation's standard software process for developing, testing and maintaining the application.

The level 4 of maturity

Level Four: Managed

Management can effectively control the software development effort using precise measurements.

At this level, organisation set a quantitative quality goal for both software process and software maintenance.

At this maturity level, the performance of processes is controlled using statistical and other quantitative techniques, and is quantitatively predictable.

The level 5 of maturity

Level Five: Optimising

The Key characteristic of this level is focusing on continually improving process performance through both incremental and innovative technological improvements.

At this level, changes to the process are to improve the process performance and at the same time maintaining statistical probability to achieve the established quantitative process-improvement objectives.

Example of CMM

Software CMM: enhance a software focused development and maintenance capability

People CMM: develop, motivate and retain project talent.

(Data source: www.tutorialspoint.com)

Immature VS mature organisation

here are following characteristics of an immature organisation:

Process improvised during project

Approved processes being ignored

Reactive, not proactive

Unrealistic budget and schedule

Quality sacrificed for schedule

No objective measure of quality

There are following characteristics of an mature organisation:

Inter-group communication and coordination

Work accomplished according to plan

Practices consistent with processes

Processes updated as necessary

Well defined roles/responsibilities

Management formally commits

Data source: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/cmmi/cmmi-overview.htm

CMMI Levels

CMMI levels, from lowest to highest, are:

Incomplete

Performed

Managed

Defined

Quantitatively Managed

Optimising

Companies may not get to bid on government projects unless they have a CMMI Level 3

PMI’s Maturity Model

PMI released the Organisational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) in December 2003

Model is based on market research surveys sent to more than 30,000 project management professionals and incorporates 180 best practices and more than 2,400 capabilities, outcomes, and key performance indicators

Addresses standards for excellence in project, program, and portfolio management best practices and explains the capabilities necessary to achieve those best practices

Best Practice

OPM3 provides the following example to illustrate a best practice, capability, outcome, and key performance indicator:

Best practice: Establish internal project management communities

Capability: Facilitate project management activities

Outcome: Local initiatives, meaning the organisation develops pockets of consensus around areas of special interest

Key performance indicator: Community addresses local issues

Using Software to Assist in Project Quality Management

Spreadsheet and charting software helps create Pareto diagrams, fishbone diagrams, and so on

Statistical software packages help perform statistical analysis

Specialised software products help manage Six Sigma projects or create quality control charts

Project management software helps create Gantt charts and other tools to help plan and track work related to quality management

Chapter Summary

Project quality management ensures that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken

Main processes include:

Plan quality

Perform quality assurance

Perform quality control

5 whys: A technique in which you repeatedly ask the question “Why?” to help peel away the layers of symptoms that can lead to the root cause of a problem

Acceptance decisions: Decisions that determine if the products or services produced as part of the project will be accepted or rejected

Appraisal cost: The cost of evaluating processes and their outputs to ensure that a project is error-free or within an acceptable error range

Benchmarking: A technique used to generate ideas for quality improvements by comparing specific project practices or product characteristics to those of other projects or products within or outside the performing organization

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI): A process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes

Cause-and-effect diagram: A diagram that traces complaints about quality problems back to the responsible production operations to help find the root cause; also known as a fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram

Checksheet : A technique used to collect and analyse data; sometimes called a tally sheet or checklist

Conformance: Delivering products that meet requirements and fitness for use

Conformance to requirements: Project processes and products that meet written specifications

Control chart: A graphic display of data that illustrates the results of a process over time

Cost of non-conformance: Taking responsibility for failures or not meeting quality expectations

Cost of quality: The cost of conformance plus the cost of non-conformance

Defect: Any instance in which the product or service fails to meet customer requirements

Design of experiments: A quality technique that helps identify which variables have the most influence on the overall outcome of a process

Features: The special characteristics that appeal to users

Fishbone diagram: A diagram that traces complaints about quality problems back to the responsible production operations to help find the root cause; also known as a cause-and-effect diagram or Ishikawa diagram

Flowchart: A graphic display of the logic and flow of processes that helps you analyze how problems occur and how processes can be improved

Functionality: The degree to which a system performs its intended function

Integration testing: Testing that occurs between unit and system testing to test functionally grouped components and ensure that a subset or subsets of the entire system work together

Ishikawa diagram A diagram that traces complaints about quality problems back to the responsible production operations to help find the root cause; also known as a cause-and-effect diagram or fishbone diagram

ISO 9000 A quality system standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that includes a three-part, continuous cycle of planning, controlling, and documenting quality in an organization

Kaizen: The Japanese word for improvement or change for the better; an approach used for continuously improving quality in organizations

Lean: An approach for improving quality that involves evaluating processes to maximize customer value while minimizing waste

Maintainability: The ease of performing maintenance on a product

Maturity model: A framework for helping organizations improve their processes and systems

Metric: A standard of measurement

Performance: How well a product or service performs the customer’s intended use

Project quality management: Ensuring that a project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken

Quality: The totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs or the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements

Quality assurance: Periodic evaluation of overall project performance to ensure that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards

Quality audit: A structured review of specific quality management activities that helps identify lessons learned and that can improve performance on current or future projects

Quality control: Monitoring specific project results to ensure that they comply with the relevant quality standards and identifying ways to improve overall quality

Reliability: The ability of a product or service to perform as expected under normal conditions

Rework: Action taken to bring rejected items into compliance with product requirements, specifications, or other stakeholder expectations

Six Sigma A comprehensive and flexible system for achieving, sustaining, and maximizing business success that is uniquely driven by close understanding of customer needs, disciplined use of facts, data, and statistical analysis, and diligent attention to managing, improving, and reinventing business processes

Software defect: Anything that must be changed before delivery of the program

System outputs: The screens and reports the system generates

System testing: Testing the entire system as one entity to ensure that it is working properly

Unit test: A test of each individual component (often a program) to ensure that it is as defect-free as possible

User acceptance testing: An independent test performed by end users prior to accepting the delivered system