Cost Benefit Analysis

This technique helps the project manager to weigh the benefits of the quality efforts versus the costs to determine the appropriate quality level and requirements for the project.

COST OF QUALITY (COQ)

COQ involves looking at the costs of conformance and non-conformance to quality and creating an appropriate balance. The costs of conformance should be lower than the costs of non-conformance.

RULE OF SEVEN

The rule of seven is a thumb rule (also known as heuristics). It refers to a group or series of non-random data points that total seven on one side of the mean. The rule of seven tells the project manager that even if these points are within the control limits, they are not random and the process may be out of control.

ASSIGNABLE CAUSE / SPECIAL CAUSE VARIATION

If there is an assignable cause or special cause variation, it means a data point or series of data points require investigation to determine the cause of variation.

BENCHMARKING

This technique involves looking at other projects to get ideas for improvement on the current project and to provide a basis (or benchmark) to use in measuring quality performance.

DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS (DOE) DOE

uses experimentation to statistically determine what variables will improve quality. DOE is faster and a more accurate statistical method that allows project managers to systematically change all of the important factors in a process and see which combination has a lower impact on the project.

STATISTICAL SAMPLING

Doing quality audits for all the manufactured products in a project might be a time-consuming task. Here, it is best to take a sample of a population. Sampling is used when:

• Auditing the population may take too long

• It costs too much

• Auditing is destructive

The sample size and frequency of measurements are determined as a part of the Plan Quality process, and the actual sampling is done in Perform Quality Control.

OUTPUTS OF PLAN QUALITY

Following are the results of the Plan Quality process:

Quality Management Plan:

The quality management plan is the process to determine what quality is and to put a plan in place to manage quality.

Quality Metrics:

The project manager needs to think through the areas on the project that are important to measure and decide what measurement systems are acceptable.

Checklist:

A quality checklist is the list of items to inspect, a list of steps to be performed, or a picture of the item to be inspected, with space to note any defects found.

Process Improvement Plan:

The plan for improving the processes is called the process improvement plan and it becomes a part of the project management plan. Process improvement plan helps save time by increasing efficiency and preventing problems. It also saves money and increases the probability that the customer will be satisfied.

Project Management Plan and Project Document Updates:

Updates to the project management plan and project documents are needed throughout the project management process.