Project Quality Management

This chapter covers key concepts related to Project Quality Management.
The knowledge area of Project Quality Management consists of the following processes -

Quality Management Processes

Process	Project Phase	Key Deliverables
Plan Quality	Planning	Quality Management Plan, Quality Metrics
Perform Quality Assurance	Execution	Change Requests
Perform Quality Control	Monitoring and Controlling	Quality control measurements

The process of Plan Quality includes defining quality requirements of the project and documenting how the project will ensure compliance. The ITTO of Plan Quality process are given below.

Plan Quality Process

Inputs	Tools and Techniques	Outputs
Scope baseline	Cost-benefit analysis	Quality management plan
Stakeholder register	Cost of quality	Quality metrics
Cost performance baseline	Control charts	Quality checklists
Schedule baseline	Benchmarking	Process improvement plan
Risk register	Design of experiments	Project document updates
Enterprise environmental factors	Stastical sampling
Organizational process assets	Flowcharting
	Proprietary quality management methodology
	Additional quality planning tools

Grade refers to category or rank given to entities having same functional use but different technical characteristics. As an example, for different grades of hotels, the customers expectations are different. Poor grade may be acceptable, but poor quality is not.
The aim of quality is to ensure "Conformance to requirements" and "fitness for use".
Quality Policy defines the company goals and how to adhere to them. This acts as an input to Quality Planning for a project. Quality Policy is part of Organizational Process assets.
Deming suggested a process of Plan-Do-Check-Act to improve quality. According to Deming, each process should go through these steps to improve the quality.
Kaizen Theory - Apply continuous small improvements to reduce costs and ensure consistency.
Marginal Analysis - You compare the cost of incremental improvements against the increase in revenue made from quality improvements. Optimal quality is reached when cost of improvements equals the costs to achieve quality.
The value of sigma of Normal Distribution are given below. These are important for the exam.

Normal Distribution Sigma values

Sigma	Percentage covered
One sigma	68.26%
Two sigma	95.46%
Three sigma	99.73%
Six sigma	99.99%

Giving extras i.e. doing more than the project scope is called gold-plating. PMI does not recommend gold-plating.
Quality must be planned in and not inspected in. Prevention is more important than inspection.
Quality Assurance is done during execution of the project. It includes -

• Process of evaluating overall performance on a regular basis
• Re-evaluating quality standards
• Quality audits - structured review of quality activities that identify lessons learned. These lessons learned are used for process improvement.

Perform Quality Assurance involves reviewing the quality requirements and auditing the results from quality control measurements. Perform Quality Assurance uses data created during Perform Quality Control.

ITTO of Perform Quality Assurance

Inputs	Tools and Techniques	Outputs
Project management plan	Plan Quality and Perform Quality Control tools and techniques	Organizational process updates
Quality metrics	Quality audits	Change requests
Work performance information	Process analysis	Project management plan updates
Quality control measurements		Project document updates

Perform Quality Control focuses on correctness of work. It includes inspections. The inputs, tools and techniques and outputs (ITTO) used for Perform Quality Control process are -

ITTO of Perform Quality Control

Inputs	Tools and Techniques	Outputs
Project management plan	Cause and effect diagram	Quality control measurements
Quality metrics	Control charts	Validated changes
Quality checklists	Flowcharting	Validated deliverables
Work performance measurements	Histogram	Organizational process assets updates
Approved change requests	Pareto chart	Change requests
Deliverables	Run chart	Project management plan updates
Organizational process assets	Scatter diagram	Project document updates
	Statistical Sampling
	Inspection
	Approved change requests review

In Just-In-Time (JIT) Quality, the amount of inventory is zero. The inputs are made available, just when they are required. This reduces the storage cost.
Rule of seven : In control charts, if there are seven points on one side of mean, then an assignable cause must be found.
The process of Analogous Estimation involves looking at the history of past projects, and use them to make estimates.