Remember these Ten Costs of Poor Quality

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Remember these Ten Costs of Poor Quality

It costs money and time to build a quality solution. You may think that it is cheaper to skip many of the quality management steps, but this is usually not the case. It is important to recognize that there is also a cost to having poor quality. These costs may not be apparent when the project is progressing, but should definitely be taken into account as part of the full life cycle cost of the solution being delivered. Examples of the cost of poor quality include:

  1. Rework. This is work that is required to fix deliverables that you thought were already complete and correct. Whenever you have rework it is a sign that your quality management process is not as rigorous as it needs to be. 
  2. Bad decisions. If there are errors in your solutions you will end up making decisions based on bad or misleading information. These bad decisions could have long term consequences for your company. 
  3. Troubleshooting. It takes time to investigate to determine the cause of errors and defects that occur on the project.
  4. Poor morale. No one likes to work for an organization or a project that has poor processes or produces poor quality solutions. Costs of poor morale include increased absenteeism, higher turnover and less productivity from the staff.
  5. Warranty work. This includes work that is performed on a product or application for free (or a reduced price) under a warranty. If your project produces a product with lower quality you will see a rise in the cost of warranty claims.
  6. Repairs / maintenance. This is work that is done to fix problems after the solution goes live. Poor quality solutions usually have much higher repair and maintenance costs.
  7. Client dissatisfaction. If a solution is of poor quality, the client will not be happy and may not buy from you again at a later date. If the project is internal, the client may not want to use the project manager and team members on subsequent projects. 
  8. Help desk. Much of the effort and cost of maintaining a help desk service is required because the users have problems with project solutions or have questions understanding how to utilize the solutions.
  9. Support staff.  Much of the effort and cost associated with a support staff is needed to maintain a solution because of problems, errors, questions, etc.
  10. Mistrust. When project teams deliver poor quality products the client starts to develop a level of mistrust with the project team and the performing organization. The client starts to believe that the project organization can never build a good product and this starts to lead to a mistrust of project team skills, processes and motivation.

Quality management has a cost. There is also a cost to delivering poor quality. One of the key points of formal quality management is that if you spend quality time on internal quality management (prevention and inspection), you will save substantially on the internal and external failure costs. In fact, the savings for external failure costs can be substantial. If you spend more time focusing on building a better quality product during the project, the cost of operating the product long-term may be dramatically reduced.

Project Quality Review

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Seven Steps for a Project Quality Review

In some cases, such as a government project, periodic audits may be called for as a part of the overall contract. This “outside party” could be any qualified person outside of the project manager. In some cases, your organization may have an internal project audit specialist. It is possible that the Project Director or the Project Sponsor could also perform this audit. The outside party could be an outside contractor or consultant, but they do not need to be.

The audit itself focuses on whether effective project management processes are being utilized and whether the project appears to be on-track. A project audit asks questions about the processes used to manage the project and build deliverables. The audit can follow this process:

  1. Notify the parties (Auditor) – The auditor notifies the project manager of the upcoming audit and schedules a convenient time and place. Other key stakeholders are notified of the audit as well.
  2. Prepare for the audit (Auditor) – The auditor may request certain information up-front. The auditor might also ask the project manager to be prepared to discuss certain aspects of the project. This ensures that the actual meeting time is as productive as possible.
  3. Perform initial interview (Auditor, Project Manager) – During the initial meeting, the auditor asks the appropriate questions to ensure the project is on-track. If there are any areas that are not on track, the auditor notes them as such.
  4. Perform as many other interviews as necessary (optional) (Auditor, Project Team) – On many projects, the audit might culminate in the initial meeting. If the project is large or complex, the auditor might need to perform follow-up analysis. This includes meeting with other team members and clients, and reviewing further documentation.
  5. Document the findings (Auditor) – The auditor documents the status and the processes used on this project against best practices. If the organization has standards and policies in place for managing projects, the auditor determines whether any of these are not being followed on the audited project. The auditor also makes recommendations on things that can be done to provide more effective and proactive management of the project.
  6. Review draft audit report (Auditor, Project Manager) – The auditor and the project manager meet again to go over the initial findings. This auditor describes any project management deficiencies and recommendations for changes. This review also provides an opportunity for the project manager to provide a rebuttal when necessary. The initial audit findings might be modified based on specific feedback from the project manager.
  7. Issue final report (Auditor) – The auditor issues a final report of findings and recommendations. The project manager may also issue a formal response to the audit. In the formal response, the project manager can accept points and discuss plans to implement them. The project manager may also voice his disagreement with certain audit points, and explain his reason why. In these cases, the project sponsor and the project director (manager of the project manager) will need to decide if the project manager should comply with the recommendations or not.

Manage Quality

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Many people find quality management to be one of the more difficult project management processes to implement. This is because quality is hard to define, and formal quality management requires you to collect metrics to validate the state of quality. The following process will help create a framework for the quality management process.

1. Create a Quality Management Plan

Develop a Quality Management Plan to identify the major deliverables, completeness and correctness criteria, quality control activities and quality assurance activities. The Quality Management Plan also describes how you will ensure that the client’s quality requirements are achieved. It is the place to describe the processes and activities that will be put into place to ensure that quality deliverables are produced. 

2. Determine the customer requirements for quality

Work with your customer to determine their requirements for quality. The high-level characteristics of quality can be uncovered during the project definition process. The detailed quality requirements should be uncovered when you gather business requirements.

3. Define a set of metrics to validate quality requirements are met

Identify a set of metrics that will provide insight into the quality of the deliverables. The project manager should already be capturing overall financial and duration metrics. The quality-related metrics need to be more sophisticated. There are two areas where you are trying to manage quality – in your project work processes and in the actual deliverables you are building. You should try to capture metrics that will measure each.

4. Execute quality control activities

Quality control refers to activities that validate the quality of your deliverables. It is also referred to as “inspection”. Ensure that the quality control activities for every deliverable are performed while the project is underway.

5. Execute quality assurance activities

Quality assurance refers to the processes used to build deliverables. It is also referred to as “prevention”. Having good processes should results in good quality deliverables.

6. Monitor and resolve deliverable quality

You need to validate the quality of your deliverables on an ongoing basis. When quality problems are found, implement a process to determine the cause and to make improvements in the process.

Using this process will help you understand, plan for and manage the state of quality on your project.

Using a Quality Management Program

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Using a quality management program is the best known way of creating a product that meets or exceeds the specifications set out in the business plan for creating your revenue stream. To have a plan like this in place, it first has to be created with the correct specifications that your facility can produce on a regular basis.

The creating of a quality management program begins with knowing the limitations of your manufacturing process and the equipment you will be using. Once this is known, then you can proceed to the documentation of your quality plan. This can be done in an effeicent manner with the use of the quality management template. This preformatted document has a set path the project manager can take to filling in the required information about your quality processes and what is expected from it.

By using the template for the documenting of the quality management program, the project manager can concentrate more on the content of the plan rather than having to worry or determining what should be included and where it should be placed. This makes it possible to include greater detail that is more accurate into the plan itself that will reduce any possible delays in the execution phase of the project lifecycle.

In the quality management program, there has to be two active teams. This will include the Quality Assurance team that will create all of the documentation needed involving the processes and methods to be used to determine if the deliverable meets or fails the set specifications. This team has to know the limitations of the personnel conducting the inspections along with the most economical manner in which to conduct the inspections.

The second team in the quality management program is the Quality Control team. They are the ones that do the actual inspections and record their findings. The documents they create will be the proof needed to show regulators and customers alike that you are producing what you claim to be making.

By having a quality management program, your deliverables will be easier to pass thru the custom inspections easier so your target audience will be able to purchase them. Making it to the global market faster is key to success in today

Creating a Quality Control Plan

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Creating a quality control plan is not something that can happen overnight or by accident. This is one of the important processes that must be documented in all business ventures that have the deliverable aimed at the global market place.

 

To begin a quality control plan, the use of a project management tool, the templates, is advisable. This is a structured document that has all of the necessary task that must be addresses for your quality plan to be complete. The project management templates are also created so the tasks are listed in the most efficient order to follow. This makes you plan more constructive to use when you are wishing to increase the level or just check the level of quality your deliverable will have.

 

To have a successful quality control plan, you must not only know the requirements of your customer or target audience, but put into place ways to achieve them. The plans are like a set of instructions that should be followed. By constructing your plan in a method that accomplishes the goals you need to obtain, the final result should be acceptable.

 

Just like in the six sigma methodology, your quality control plan should also have a structure that permits improvements to it. This will allow your staff to have valuable input into how to improve the efficiency and quality of the production of your deliverable. This makes it easy for your deliverable to be constantly improving. It also makes it easier to save money on the budget because you and your project team are working more efficiently.

 

By making your quality control plan as complete as possible, you can show your target audience you have addressed all of their needs and concerns when it comes to creating the deliverable they desire. This due diligence is what can help cut thru a great amount of red tape if or when a problem arises.

 

The creating of a quality control plan is not easy, but it is very doable. With the aid of knowing the goals of the business venture along with the right project management tools, this task can be accomplished quickly and easily so you can progress to the next task in your project.