As an employee, you want to enjoy your work and become known as a valuable team member. This module will help you acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to work effectively individually and in groups. It will give you the basis to contribute to the goals of the organisation which employs you.
It is essential that you begin your employment by becoming familiar with the organizational policies and procedures and industry standards to which you, as an employee, must conform.
Project quality refers to the characteristics by which a project meets requirements and delivers a product or service that is ‘fit for purpose’ and meets stakeholder expectations.
Quality means different things to different people. Therefore, it is crucial to have a clear understanding and clear expectations of what quality is in a project.
Quality should be aligned with:
- Value
- Scope
- Priorities.
To ensure that the project requirements are met and validated, Project Quality Management is put in place. Project Quality Management includes the processes and activities of the organisation — its quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities — so that the project will satisfy the demands for which it is undertaken.
Project quality management is not a linear process. It is a repetitive cycle of establishing, measuring, and maintaining quality throughout the project until the desired results are obtained.
In this module, you will learn how to apply different project quality management techniques embedded in each process and phase of the project.
Here are the three (3) project quality management processes that will be referenced throughout this module:
| Quality Planning |
|
|---|---|
| Quality Assurance | Auditing the quality requirements and results from quality control measurements to ensure that appropriate quality standards and operational definitions are used |
| Quality Control | Monitoring and recording results of executing the quality activities to assess performance and recommend necessary changes |
These three quality management processes are embedded in the project life cycle, which consists of the following stages:
In the scoping and planning phase, the quality requirements of project stakeholders are determined and used to develop quantifiable quality criteria.
In the implementation phase, quality assurance and quality control activities are carried out according to the agreed quality standards and guidelines. These include maintaining compliance and quality control records and audit documentation as per the established processes and reporting issues as required.
Throughout the project, and particularly in the controlling and closing stages, periodic and final reviews are completed, and stakeholder satisfaction analysis is performed. These form the basis of the findings during the project that can be carried forward to contribute to future projects and the continuous improvement of the organisation.
Combined with the identified quality requirements, policies and procedures, and other compliance constraints, the various quality assurance and quality control activities, tools, and guidelines are documented in the project quality management plan and embedded in the project processes to assure quality compliance all throughout the course of the project.
Regardless of your specific role, if you are working as part of a project team, you will be required to contribute to project quality. Quality, after all, is everybody’s business.
