22 Project Quality Management II

R. Baskaran

 

PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT

 

Project quality management is the practice that makes sure all project activities to design, plan and implement a project are effective and efficient with respect to the purpose of the objective and its performance. Project quality management involves processes and activities needed to determine and achieve project quality.

 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES 

 

• To Ensure the Delivery of High Quality Systems

• To Provide Quality products

• To understand Quality standards

 

SAMPLE FISHBONE OR ISHIKAWA DIAGRAM 

 

A fishbone diagram provides a visual representation for the categorization of the possible causes of an issue in order to discover its root causes, this diagram is also known as cause and effect diagram . The following is an example of fishbone diagram.

 

 

MALCOLM BALDRIGE AWARD AND ISO 9000 

 

The Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award was started in 1987 to recognize companies with world- class quality. ISO 9000 provides minimum requirements for an organization to meet their quality certification standards

 

QUALITY PLANNING 

 

It is important to design in quality and communicate important factors that directly contribute to meeting the customer’s requirements. The design of experiments helps identify which variable have the most influence on the overall outcome of a process. Many scope aspects of IT projects affect quality like functionality, features, system outputs, performance, reliability, and maintainability.

 

QUALITY ASSURANCE 

 

Quality assurance includes all the activities related to satisfying the relevant quality standards for a project. Another goal of quality assurance is continuous quality improvement. Benchmarking can be used to generate ideas for quality improvements. Quality audits help identify lessons learned that can improve performance on current or future projects.

 

QUALITY CONTROL 

 

Quality control focuses on ensuring quality measures for the product, and checks whether the product meets the specification. The main outputs of quality control are acceptance decisions, rework and process adjustments. The tools and techniques for quality control  include

 

◦  Pareto Analysis

◦  Statistical Sampling

◦  Quality Control Charts

◦  Testing

 

Pareto Analysis 

 

Pareto analysis involves identifying the vital few contributors that account for the most quality problems in a system. It is also called the 80-20 rule, meaning that 80% of problems are often due to 20% of the causes. Pareto diagrams are histograms that help identify and prioritize problem areas.  The following figure shows a sample pareto diagram:

 

 

STATISTICAL SAMPLING AND STANDARD DEVIATION 

 

Statistical sampling involves choosing part of a population of interest for inspection. The size of the sample depends on how representative you want the sample to be. Sample size formula:

 

Sample size: 0.25*(certainty factor/ acceptable error)2 Commonly Used Certainty Factors

Desired Certainty Certainty Factor
95% 1.960
90% 1.645
80% 1.281

 

Standard Deviation

 

Standard deviation measures how much variation exists in a distribution of data. A small standard deviation means that data cluster closely around the middle of a distribution and there is little variability among the data. A normal distribution is a bell-shaped curve that is symmetrical about the mean or average value of a population

 

Normal Distribution and Standard Deviation 

 

Sigma and Defective Units

Specification Range

(in +/- Sigmas)

 Percent of Population

Within Range

 Defective Units

Per Billion
1 68.27 317,300,000
2 95.45 45,400,000
3 99.73 2,700,000
4 99.9937 63,000
5 99.999943 57
6 99.9999998 2

 

“Six sigma” often refers to +/-3 sigma, meaning 2.7 million defects per billion units produced, or 2.7  defects per million.

 

QUALITY CONTROL CHARTS 

 

A control chart is a graphic display of data that illustrates the results of a process over time. It helps prevent defects and allows you to determine whether a process is in control or out of control.  The figure shows a sample Quality Control Chart

 

 

Six Sigma 

 

Operating at a higher sigma value, like 6 sigma, means the product tolerance or control limits have less variability. The figure shows reducing defects with six sigma.

 

 

Seven Run Rule 

 

The seven run rule states that if seven data points in a row are all below the mean, above the mean, or increasing or decreasing, then the process needs to be examined for non-random problems.

 

TESTING

 

Many IT professionals think of testing as a stage that comes near the end of IT product development. Testing should be done during almost every phase of the IT product development life cycle. The figure shows the testing tasks in the SDLC

 

 

Types of Tests 

 

·  A unit test is done to test each individual component (often a program) to ensure it is as defect free as possible

·  Integration testing occurs between unit and system testing to test functionally grouped components

·  System testing tests the entire system as one entity

·  User acceptance testing is an independent test performed by the end user prior to accepting the delivered system.

 

IMPROVING IT PROJECT QUALITY 

 

Several suggestions for improving quality for IT projects include

 

◦  Leadership that promotes quality.

◦  Understanding the cost of quality.

◦  Focusing on organizational influences and workplace factors that affect quality.

◦  Following maturity models to improve quality.

 

LEADERSHIP

 

“It is most important that top management be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere manifestation of interest at the top, little will happen below.” – Juran, 1945. A large percentage of quality problems are associated with management, not technical issues.

 

THE COST OF QUALITY 

 

The cost of quality is the cost of conformance or delivering products that meet requirements and fitness for use. It also comprises of the cost of nonconformance or taking responsibility for failures or not meeting quality expectations

 

Downtime Caused by Software Defects 

 

Costs per Hour of Downtime Caused by Software Defects are given below:

Business Cost per Hour Downtime
Automated teller machines (medium-sized bank) $14,500
Package shipping service $28,250
Telephone ticket sales $69,000
Catalog sales center $90,000
Airline reservation center (small airline) $89,500

 

Five Cost Categories Related to Quality

 

The five cost categories related to quality are as follows:

  • Prevention cost: the cost of planning and executing a project so it is error-free or within an acceptable error range.
  • Appraisal cost: the cost of evaluating processes and their outputs to ensure quality.
  • Internal failure cost: cost incurred to correct an identified defect before the customer receives the
  • External failure cost: cost that relates to all errors not detected and corrected before delivery to the customer.
  • Measurement and test equipment costs: capital cost of equipment used to perform prevention and appraisal activities.

 

Web Links

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram
  • https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_Principle
  • https://www.edwel.com/Free-Resources/Project-Human-Resource-Management.aspx
  • https://www.tutorialspoint.com/statistics

 

Supporting & Reference Materials

  • Roger S. Pressman, “Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach”, Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2017.
  • PankajJalote, “An Integrated Approach to Software Engineering”, Second Edition, Springer Verlag, 1997.
  • Ian Sommerville, “Software Engineering”, Sixth Edition, Addison Wesley, 2015.