Tools and Techniques for Project Quality
Following are ten of the most powerful quality-focused tools and techniques that you want to consider during your planning efforts, document in your Quality Management Plan, and then implement during the execution of your project:
Requirements traceability matrix—A simple, yet often neglected technique to help control scope, expectations, and quality is the use of a requirements traceability matrix. The traceability matrix provides a documented link between the original set of approved requirements, any interim deliverable, all testing (verification) methods employed, and the final work product. This technique helps to ensure that the final work product(s) satisfy the targeted requirements and all those requirements were properly validated.
Checklists—Checklists are simple, yet powerful. They clearly capture and communicate the quality standards that the targeted work package must meet, and they improve project team productivity. They are flexible—separate checklists can be developed for each work product or project management process. They provide a mechanism to capture the lessons learned from past projects. They provide a mechanism to document the verification performed on the work package.
Templates—The development and use of templates provides a way to both communicate and control the use of certain standards and to help communize the resulting work packages and procedures across projects. In addition, templates can capture lessons-learned information (mostly updates and improvements based on prior experiences), provide guidance, and greatly improve the productivity level of a project team.
Reviews—Reviews are a key technique for ensuring quality and managing expectations, and they can take many forms. The principle here is to plan for the review-feedback-correction cycle on most, if not all, of your key deliverables. Common examples of reviews are peer reviews, inspections, client walkthroughs, audits, testing cycles, and milestone reviews.
Completion criteria—This starts during project definition with defining the acceptance criteria for the project, and it continues for each deliverable and work assignment. Answer this question in advance for each deliverable and work assignment: “How will we know when it is done?” Understanding the completion criteria up front increases productivity and avoids much of the rework that can occur when quality requirements are not understood upfront.
Small work packages—we’ve seen this one before, too. In addition to reasons previously mentioned—more accurate estimates and better control —small work packages provide a finer level of quality control, too. By establishing completeness and correctness completion criteria for each work package and verifying each work package along the way, we provide many more opportunities to detect quality discrepancies as early in the project as possible. By doing this, we can take corrective actions when the costs are lower and when time is still available.
Independent audits—The use of an independent auditor is another specific example of the “review” technique mentioned earlier. The power of this technique is in establishing the quality criteria in advance and in making the project accountable to an outside entity.
Standards—In many situations, specific quality standards either do not exist or have not been formally developed. In these cases, you establish project standards up front that will be captured in both work assignments and quality checklists. And if at all possible, facilitate this standards development with the project team.
V method—The V method is a term used for a common validation and verification approach that ensures that there is a validation and verification step for every deliverable and interim deliverable created. See the figure shown below:
The left side of the “V” notes each targeted deliverable and the right side of the “V” lists the verification method used for each deliverable directly across. This method allows us to check quality along the way rather than waiting to the end to discover there are quality defects.
Quality Management Plan—This document describes and communicates the project’s quality management system to the project stakeholders. Specifically, the Quality Management Plan should address most of these questions:
• What is the scope of the quality management system?
• How will either internal or external quality-based groups be involved?
• What are the quality standards that must be met?
• What approaches, tools, and techniques will be employed?
• How will the standards be enforced?
• How will quality defects or discrepancies be tracked and reported?
• How will each deliverable be validated?
• What are the expected costs?
Quality Strategies
In addition to the powerful quality tools and techniques, there are five other key strategies related to managing project quality that we need to discuss:
Use customer-focused project approaches—This might be self-evident by now, but utilizing project approaches that accomplish the following:
Popular, modern-day project approaches and techniques that fall into this category include the following:
• Iterative development
• Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
• Prototyping
• Computer simulation
• Agile development
• Rational Unified Processing (Use Case development)
• Scenario development
• Storyboarding
Following are ten of the most powerful quality-focused tools and techniques that you want to consider during your planning efforts, document in your Quality Management Plan, and then implement during the execution of your project:
Requirements traceability matrix—A simple, yet often neglected technique to help control scope, expectations, and quality is the use of a requirements traceability matrix. The traceability matrix provides a documented link between the original set of approved requirements, any interim deliverable, all testing (verification) methods employed, and the final work product. This technique helps to ensure that the final work product(s) satisfy the targeted requirements and all those requirements were properly validated.
Checklists—Checklists are simple, yet powerful. They clearly capture and communicate the quality standards that the targeted work package must meet, and they improve project team productivity. They are flexible—separate checklists can be developed for each work product or project management process. They provide a mechanism to capture the lessons learned from past projects. They provide a mechanism to document the verification performed on the work package.
Templates—The development and use of templates provides a way to both communicate and control the use of certain standards and to help communize the resulting work packages and procedures across projects. In addition, templates can capture lessons-learned information (mostly updates and improvements based on prior experiences), provide guidance, and greatly improve the productivity level of a project team.
Reviews—Reviews are a key technique for ensuring quality and managing expectations, and they can take many forms. The principle here is to plan for the review-feedback-correction cycle on most, if not all, of your key deliverables. Common examples of reviews are peer reviews, inspections, client walkthroughs, audits, testing cycles, and milestone reviews.
Completion criteria—This starts during project definition with defining the acceptance criteria for the project, and it continues for each deliverable and work assignment. Answer this question in advance for each deliverable and work assignment: “How will we know when it is done?” Understanding the completion criteria up front increases productivity and avoids much of the rework that can occur when quality requirements are not understood upfront.
Small work packages—we’ve seen this one before, too. In addition to reasons previously mentioned—more accurate estimates and better control —small work packages provide a finer level of quality control, too. By establishing completeness and correctness completion criteria for each work package and verifying each work package along the way, we provide many more opportunities to detect quality discrepancies as early in the project as possible. By doing this, we can take corrective actions when the costs are lower and when time is still available.
Independent audits—The use of an independent auditor is another specific example of the “review” technique mentioned earlier. The power of this technique is in establishing the quality criteria in advance and in making the project accountable to an outside entity.
Standards—In many situations, specific quality standards either do not exist or have not been formally developed. In these cases, you establish project standards up front that will be captured in both work assignments and quality checklists. And if at all possible, facilitate this standards development with the project team.
V method—The V method is a term used for a common validation and verification approach that ensures that there is a validation and verification step for every deliverable and interim deliverable created. See the figure shown below:
The left side of the “V” notes each targeted deliverable and the right side of the “V” lists the verification method used for each deliverable directly across. This method allows us to check quality along the way rather than waiting to the end to discover there are quality defects.
Quality Management Plan—This document describes and communicates the project’s quality management system to the project stakeholders. Specifically, the Quality Management Plan should address most of these questions:
• What is the scope of the quality management system?
• How will either internal or external quality-based groups be involved?
• What are the quality standards that must be met?
• What approaches, tools, and techniques will be employed?
• How will the standards be enforced?
• How will quality defects or discrepancies be tracked and reported?
• How will each deliverable be validated?
• What are the expected costs?
Quality Strategies
In addition to the powerful quality tools and techniques, there are five other key strategies related to managing project quality that we need to discuss:
Use customer-focused project approaches—This might be self-evident by now, but utilizing project approaches that accomplish the following:
- Fully engages the customer throughout the project lifecycle.
- Partners the project team with the targeted customers.
- Enables the customer to provide feedback on “solution-like” deliverables as soon as possible.
- Emphasizes prevention and early detection of quality defects.
Popular, modern-day project approaches and techniques that fall into this category include the following:
• Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
• Prototyping
• Computer simulation
• Agile development
• Rational Unified Processing (Use Case development)
• Scenario development
• Storyboarding
Take customer’s perspective—From the development of requirements to the testing approach, make sure to take the customer’s perspective. In particular, the testing environment needs to simulate the real-world customer environment to the greatest extent possible. Without this approach, your verification procedures are incomplete at best and misleading at their worst.
Pre-verify deliverables—To better manage client expectations, including confidence in the project team, make sure to conduct an internal quality check on any deliverable that will be reviewed by the client. Make sure to schedule these internal verification steps, too.
Focus on the people—There is no better quality management technique than to have people who are good at what they do, who take pride in their work, and who are focused on the customer experience. The project management processes of staffing, managing, and leading a team are key project quality factors.
Leverage expertise—A great way to deal with unanticipated project quality issues is to structure the team with one or more mentors (or coaches). Because many organizations do not have an effective way to formally pass along the lessons from the past, this strategy is an effective way to leverage the wisdom that lies within the social fabric of the organization. The two positions that are most needed are a mentor for the project manager and a technical mentor for the technical aspects of the project. In many cases, the technical mentor might actually provide the QA function for the technical deliverables.
Quality-Related Challenges
Now let’s take a quick look at some common project quality-related challenges:
Forgot to pop the question—This problem can be found on projects that are guilty of not having an organized quality approach and on projects with formal methodology coming out their ears. Always ask the client what “quality” means to him. Again, do not assume anything, especially here.
“Good intentions, but...”—Many projects start off great. The Quality Management Plan is fully developed and approved, but then...nothing. Stuff happens and the quality management procedures are never carried out.
“We can’t afford it”—There is a common misconception in many organizations that quality-focused efforts are overhead and cost too much. This perception originates from two main sources. One, projects in these organizations are likely managed very informally, so to add quality management seems like a major investment. Two, the quality standards seem non-value added. In some cases, this might be true. In either case, better understanding, communication, and salesmanship are needed. The
real question to be asked is, “Can you afford not to focus on quality?” Historical data shows that in most cases the cost of poor quality (non-conformance) is much greater than the cost of prevention.
Not factored in the schedule—Especially on projects where the quality procedures are an afterthought, the actual quality tasks (reviews, audits, and so on) are never factored into the project schedule.
Quality resources over allocated—In many project situations, the individuals who are designated for quality assurance roles are also fulfilling other roles. If the quality assurance role was not properly
allocated and assigned to project tasks, you might have an over allocated resource. In this case, or when other pressure events occur, the quality assurance hat is often the first to go for these multi-role team members.
Testing takes more than one cycle?—An age-old dilemma on projects that require one or more testing phases on the targeted product is how much time to allocate for each phase. The common mistake is to officially schedule a testing phase as if it will be completed in the initial test cycle.
Avoid gold-plating—Traditionally, gold-plating is a term associated with project scope management, and it refers to the practice of doing more (adding additional features) than what the requirements (specifications) call for without undergoing proper change control procedures. This is also an issue for project quality management for two reasons. One, the gold plated features might introduce new quality risks into the equation. And two, the gold-plated features might do nothing to improve the actual deliverable quality, yet they can require additional time and costs.
No risk analysis—On the one hand, many project managers are guilty of not identifying or being aware of the quality standards they are accountable for. On the other, there are project managers that blindly accept all the quality standards without properly assessing the impact to the project objectives and other critical success factors. Always assess the impact of meeting each quality standard, especially the schedule and cost impact. Decisions on priorities and risk response strategies may be needed to deal with the impact.
Thus we conclude that most aspects of managing project quality are interwoven into the fabric of solid project management practices. If we manage with a focus on the following factors then our projects will be well-positioned to meet their quality objectives:
• The customer
• Requirements/scope
• Clear communication
• Clear completion/acceptance criteria
• Small work packages
• Prevention
• Skilled resources and high-performing teams
Pre-verify deliverables—To better manage client expectations, including confidence in the project team, make sure to conduct an internal quality check on any deliverable that will be reviewed by the client. Make sure to schedule these internal verification steps, too.
Focus on the people—There is no better quality management technique than to have people who are good at what they do, who take pride in their work, and who are focused on the customer experience. The project management processes of staffing, managing, and leading a team are key project quality factors.
Leverage expertise—A great way to deal with unanticipated project quality issues is to structure the team with one or more mentors (or coaches). Because many organizations do not have an effective way to formally pass along the lessons from the past, this strategy is an effective way to leverage the wisdom that lies within the social fabric of the organization. The two positions that are most needed are a mentor for the project manager and a technical mentor for the technical aspects of the project. In many cases, the technical mentor might actually provide the QA function for the technical deliverables.
Quality-Related Challenges
Now let’s take a quick look at some common project quality-related challenges:
Forgot to pop the question—This problem can be found on projects that are guilty of not having an organized quality approach and on projects with formal methodology coming out their ears. Always ask the client what “quality” means to him. Again, do not assume anything, especially here.
“Good intentions, but...”—Many projects start off great. The Quality Management Plan is fully developed and approved, but then...nothing. Stuff happens and the quality management procedures are never carried out.
“We can’t afford it”—There is a common misconception in many organizations that quality-focused efforts are overhead and cost too much. This perception originates from two main sources. One, projects in these organizations are likely managed very informally, so to add quality management seems like a major investment. Two, the quality standards seem non-value added. In some cases, this might be true. In either case, better understanding, communication, and salesmanship are needed. The
real question to be asked is, “Can you afford not to focus on quality?” Historical data shows that in most cases the cost of poor quality (non-conformance) is much greater than the cost of prevention.
Not factored in the schedule—Especially on projects where the quality procedures are an afterthought, the actual quality tasks (reviews, audits, and so on) are never factored into the project schedule.
Quality resources over allocated—In many project situations, the individuals who are designated for quality assurance roles are also fulfilling other roles. If the quality assurance role was not properly
allocated and assigned to project tasks, you might have an over allocated resource. In this case, or when other pressure events occur, the quality assurance hat is often the first to go for these multi-role team members.
Testing takes more than one cycle?—An age-old dilemma on projects that require one or more testing phases on the targeted product is how much time to allocate for each phase. The common mistake is to officially schedule a testing phase as if it will be completed in the initial test cycle.
Avoid gold-plating—Traditionally, gold-plating is a term associated with project scope management, and it refers to the practice of doing more (adding additional features) than what the requirements (specifications) call for without undergoing proper change control procedures. This is also an issue for project quality management for two reasons. One, the gold plated features might introduce new quality risks into the equation. And two, the gold-plated features might do nothing to improve the actual deliverable quality, yet they can require additional time and costs.
No risk analysis—On the one hand, many project managers are guilty of not identifying or being aware of the quality standards they are accountable for. On the other, there are project managers that blindly accept all the quality standards without properly assessing the impact to the project objectives and other critical success factors. Always assess the impact of meeting each quality standard, especially the schedule and cost impact. Decisions on priorities and risk response strategies may be needed to deal with the impact.
Thus we conclude that most aspects of managing project quality are interwoven into the fabric of solid project management practices. If we manage with a focus on the following factors then our projects will be well-positioned to meet their quality objectives:
• The customer
• Requirements/scope
• Clear communication
• Clear completion/acceptance criteria
• Small work packages
• Prevention
• Skilled resources and high-performing teams
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