**7. Quality management**

Quality management refers to the processes required to ensure that projects satisfy the needs for which they are undertaken. These processes should make certain that a project does not deviate from agreed-upon specifications. Quality management requires accurate assessment of stakeholder needs and requirements during both project planning and implementation. It is important to remember that quality must be planned in as opposed to inspected in. Without adequate quality management, projects may face the risk of increased costs while compromising the project team morale and customer satisfaction.

*Quality planning* makes use of some quality management tools and techniques project outcomes (products and tangible deliverables) and project management processes. This is an important distinction to understand.

• *Quality related to project outcomes* (deliverables or services) is determined during the planning phase when requirements and specifications are defined. Quality assurance and control processes are implemented as we develop these project deliverables during the project execution phase. This aspect of quality is primarily the responsibility of the project manager and the project team.

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inevitable.

*Project Management Concepts*

costs tend to be higher.

quality standards.

Control tools include:

problems or effects.

**8. Risk management**

• *Control charts:* Determines process stability.

• *Run Charts:* Show the history and pattern of variation.

• *Trend analysis:* Assesses non-conformance over time.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93766*

manager and the project team.

• *Quality related to project management processes* is influenced by the organization's knowledge and maturity in managing projects. However, proper implementation of quality assurance remains the responsibility of the project

One of the most important tasks a project manager must focus on when planning quality is to define quality and how it will be measured (i.e., What defines Project Success?). When developing these metrics, Project Managers should remember to include both quantitative (benchmark specifications, experiments, and financial/ cost metrics) and qualitative (subjective assessment) metrics. *Cost of Quality* includes consideration of conformance costs (both prevention and appraisal) and non-conformance or failure costs (both internal and external). Non-conformance

*Quality Assurance* is about evaluating overall project performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant system of

*Quality Control* is monitoring specific project results to determine their conformance to specific quality metrics and identifying ways to eliminate the causes of unsatisfactory performance. During Quality Control quantitative analysis is applied to specific processes and project protocols. When processes operate beyond predetermined limits, adjustments will have to be swiftly implemented to bring the operations back into conformance with project-defined quality standards. Quality

• *Cause and Effect Diagrams:* Illustrates how various factors might cause

• *Pareto diagrams:* Identifies quantity of defects assigned by category and cause*.*

• *Statistical sampling:* Narrows a population of study to a representative sample.

It is important that you understand how these tools operate. Most of these tools are not specific to project environments. They have been developed and utilized to enhance better products and processes in continuous manufacturing environments.

Risk is an exposure to a situation that is usually associated with unfavorable outcome [10]. Project risk is an uncertain event or conditions that, if occurs, has a positive or a negative effect on at least on one of the project objectives. The possible result of a risk is either loss or gain. If left unaddressed or ignored, specifically, the negative risk, it could potentially interfere with the successful completion of the project and may result in time and cost overruns, or diminished quality of the product or service. Risk is integral to a project as it is a new effort that is associated with unknowns and uncertainties. In general, when you try something new, risk is

#### *Project Management Concepts DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93766*

*Operations Management - Emerging Trend in the Digital Era*

• There may be more than one critical path.

critical path.

constraints at that time.

**7. Quality management**

constitute the critical path(s) for the project.

project team morale and customer satisfaction.

processes. This is an important distinction to understand.

**6.6 Monte Carlo simulation**

• The critical path is the longest path in the network diagram.

• Allows you to identify potential points where project can go "off schedule" and slack or "float time" that allows you to delay some tasks that are not on the

This method will create a project duration that is closer to reality than CPM or PERT. This method uses computers to simulate the outcome of a project based on PERT estimates and the network diagram, but does not use the PERT formula. Simulation can tell you the probability of completing the project on any specific day, probability of completing the project for any specific amount of cost, probabil-

The network diagram shows the sequence of work elements required to reach project completion. Note that the initial stage of the network diagramming does not require time or cost estimates. We simply determine the most logical and technically viable approach to completing the project and use the network format to visualize this scenario. You must remember that initial network diagram logic is dictated by work-related constraints only; you should not introduce resource and time

Once the network illustrating a logical flow of work elements in the project is developed, you can assign (or assume) resources to each activity and develop initial task time estimates. These estimates are then aggregated across the network to calculate its critical path, and the slack times associated with each activity. These calculations are based on a forward pass to compute the earliest start and finish times for each activity, and then a backward pass to determine the latest start and finish times of the activity. Then the difference between the earliest and latest times for any activity gives us its slack time. All activities with slack times of zero duration

Quality management refers to the processes required to ensure that projects satisfy the needs for which they are undertaken. These processes should make certain that a project does not deviate from agreed-upon specifications. Quality management requires accurate assessment of stakeholder needs and requirements during both project planning and implementation. It is important to remember that quality must be planned in as opposed to inspected in. Without adequate quality management, projects may face the risk of increased costs while compromising the

*Quality planning* makes use of some quality management tools and techniques project outcomes (products and tangible deliverables) and project management

• *Quality related to project outcomes* (deliverables or services) is determined during the planning phase when requirements and specifications are defined. Quality assurance and control processes are implemented as we develop these project deliverables during the project execution phase. This aspect of quality is primarily the responsibility of the project manager and the project team.

ity of any task actually being on the critical path, and overall project risk.

**226**

• *Quality related to project management processes* is influenced by the organization's knowledge and maturity in managing projects. However, proper implementation of quality assurance remains the responsibility of the project manager and the project team.

One of the most important tasks a project manager must focus on when planning quality is to define quality and how it will be measured (i.e., What defines Project Success?). When developing these metrics, Project Managers should remember to include both quantitative (benchmark specifications, experiments, and financial/ cost metrics) and qualitative (subjective assessment) metrics. *Cost of Quality* includes consideration of conformance costs (both prevention and appraisal) and non-conformance or failure costs (both internal and external). Non-conformance costs tend to be higher.

*Quality Assurance* is about evaluating overall project performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant system of quality standards.

*Quality Control* is monitoring specific project results to determine their conformance to specific quality metrics and identifying ways to eliminate the causes of unsatisfactory performance. During Quality Control quantitative analysis is applied to specific processes and project protocols. When processes operate beyond predetermined limits, adjustments will have to be swiftly implemented to bring the operations back into conformance with project-defined quality standards. Quality Control tools include:


It is important that you understand how these tools operate. Most of these tools are not specific to project environments. They have been developed and utilized to enhance better products and processes in continuous manufacturing environments.
