ICT Project Management

Project Planning Phase – Project

Quality Management
Introduction - Quality
The International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) defines quality as;-
1) the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear
on it’s ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.
2) “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics
fulfills requirements” (ISO9000:2000)
 6.1 Some goals of quality programs include:

a) Fitness for use. (Is the product or service capable

of being used?)
b) Fitness for purpose. (Does the product or service
meet its intended purpose?)
c) Customer satisfaction. (Does the product or
service meet the customer's expectations?)
d) Conformance to the requirements. (Does the
product or service conform to the requirements?)
 6.2. What is Project quality management

• Project quality management ensures that the project will satisfy

the needs for which it was undertaken
• The project team must try to understand the key project
stakeholders expectations especially what quality means to them.
Thus it is important for them to create a good working relationship
with them and understand their stated and implied needs.
6.3. Project Quality processes
Processes include:
• a) Quality Planning
• b) Quality Assurance
• c) Quality Control
 6.4. Quality Planning

It involves Identifying which quality standards are

relevant to the project and determining how to
satisfy them.
– Implies the ability to anticipate situations and prepare
actions to bring about the desired outcome
– Modern quality management involves prevention of
defects through a program of selecting proper
materials and indoctrinating people in quality and
planning a process that ensures the appropriate
outcome
6.4.1. Project Characteristics/Attributes of Scope that bears on quality.

It is often difficult for customers to explain exactly what they want in an IT project.
Important scope management aspects of IT project that affect project quality includes;
1) Functionality; the degree to which a system performs its intended function.
2) Features; the systems special characteristics that appeal to users. It is important to
specify which are required and which are optional
3) System output: the screens and reports the system generates. It is important to
define clearly what screen and reports.
4) Performance: addresses how well a product or service perform the customers
intended use. Need to know volumes of data and transactions, number of simultaneous
users, required response time, etc.
Issues includes;
– Volume of input data
– Simultaneous logg-ins
– Projected growth in number of users
– quipment requirements
– Response time etc
5) Producibility (technology required)
• Ability of a product or service to be produced within the existing
technology, human resources, skills, knowledge, and materials at a
cost compatible with market expectations. Producibility is one of
the most critical aspects of developing any new product.
6) Usability (effort expended to use)
• The ability of a product to perform its intended function for the
specified user under the prescribed conditions. Usability is
determined by examining performance, function and condition of
a product.
7) Reliability (MTBF)
• The degree to which a unit of equipment performs its intended
function under specified conditions for a specified period of time.
8) Maintainability (Mean-Time-To-Repair: MTTR)
• The ability of a unit to be restored within a specified time to its performance capability under
the environmental operating conditions within a specified, average period of time.
9) Availability (Probability of performance)
• The probability of a product being capable of performing a required function under the
specified conditions when called upon. The key parts of availability are reliability and
maintainability.
10) Operability (Expected conditional use)
• The ability of a product to be operated by human resources for specified periods of time under
given conditions without significant degradation of the output.
11) Flexibility (Expected variable use)
• The ability of a product to be used for different purposes at different capacities and under
different conditions.
12) Social Acceptability (Environment and safety)
• The degree of compatibility between the characteristics of a product or service and the
prevailing values and expectations of the relevant society
• The degree to which a public accepts a product for use.
13) Affordability (Return for quality required)
• The ability to develop, acquire, operate, maintain, and dispose of a product over its life.
 6.4.3. Who’s Responsible for the Quality of Projects?

• Project managers are ultimately responsible for quality management on

their projects
• Several organizations and references can help project managers and
their teams understand quality
International Organization for Standardization (www.iso.org)
– When products, systems, machinery and devices work well and safely, it is
often because they meet standards. The organization responsible for many
thousands of the standards which benefit the world is ISO (derived from the
Greek isos, meaning “equal”)
 IEEE – Standards Association (www.ieee.org)
– A leading, developer of industry standards in a broad-range of industries
(Power and Energy, Information Technology, Telecommunications,
Transportation, Medical and Healthcare, nanotechnology, cyber security,
information assurance, and green technology) . Globally recognized
 6.5. Quality Assurance

• Quality assurance includes all the activities related to satisfying the relevant quality
standards for a project.
• It involves periodically evaluating overall project performance to ensure the project
will satisfy the relevant quality standards. Its goal is continuous quality improvement.

• 6.5.1. Tools for Quality Assurance

• 1. Benchmarking: the process of identifying, understanding and adapting outstanding practices
and processes from an organization anywhere in the world to help an organization improve its
performance.

• Benchmarking generates ideas for quality improvements by comparing specific project practices
or product characteristics to those of other projects or products within or outside the performing
organization
• 2. Quality audit is a structured review of specific quality management activities that help
identify lessons learned that could improve performance on current or future projects

• Performed by in-house auditors or third parties and can be scheduled or random.

 6.6. Quality Control

• Involves monitoring specific project results to ensure that they comply with the
relevant quality standards
• The main goal is to improve quality. Its main outcomes are:

 Acceptance decisions- determine if the products/services produced as part of the

project will be acceptable or be rejected and rework is then necessary
– Accepted products are called validated deliverables
– Rejected products are called re-work

 Rework – action taken to bring rejected items into compliance with products
requirements and specifications or other stakeholders expectations. Re-work can be
very expensive
 Process adjustments – activities used to correct or prevent further quality problems
based on quality control measurements (eg. purchase faster server if response time is
too slow)
 6.7. Cost related to Quality

• Cost of Quality
• Cost of quality is the total price of all efforts to achieve
product or service quality. The cost of quality considers the
expense of all the activities within a project to ensure
quality.
• This includes all work to build a product or service that
conforms to the requirements as well as all work resulting
from nonconformance to the requirements. The typical
project should have a goal of between 3-5% of the total
value as the cost of a quality program depending on the
type of project and its total dollar value.
• The cost of quality is broken into two major
categories:
• 1. Cost of Conformance
• 2. Cost of Non-Conformance

• Cost of Quality = Cost of conformance + Cost

of non-conformance
 Cost of conformance to requirements

• 1) Cost of conformance to requirements: This approach

is the cost of completing the project work to satisfy the
project scope and the expected level of quality.
• 2) Cost of nonconformance: This approach is the cost
of completing the project work without quality. The
biggest issue here is the money lost by having to redo
the project work; it’s always more cost effective to do
the work right the first time.
 Other cost includes;

• 1). Cost of Non-Quality:

–  Waste of time and materials
–  Rework of poor quality products
–  Additional material
–  Delays in schedule
–  Product and service image
–  Corporate image

Major Cost Types of Quality

• 1) Prevention Cost - cost to plan and execute a project so that it will be error-free
• 2) Appraisal Cost - cost of evaluating the processes and the Output of the processes to
ensure the product is error-free
• 3) Internal Failure Cost - cost incurred to correct an identified defect before the customer
receives the product
• 4) External Failure Cost - cost incurred due to errors detected by the customer. This
includes warranty cost, field service personnel training cost, complaint handling, and
future business losses.
• 5) Measurement and Test Equipment - capital cost of equipment used to perform
prevention and appraisal activities.
6.8. Software in Project Quality management

• 1. Spreadsheet and charting software

• 2. Statistical software to help determine
standard deviations and perform many types of
statistical analysis
• 3. Project management software to create
Gantt charts that helps to plan and track work
related to project quality management.
• ICT Project Management
• Chapter 8: Project Planning Phase – Project
Resource Management
 8.1 Introduction

• Project Human Resource Management includes the processes required to

make the most effective use of the people involved with the project.
• It includes all the project stakeholders—sponsors, customers, individual
contributor.
• Human resource management activities are often split between project
management and other managers within the performing organization. The
scope of responsibility of the project manager may lie somewhere between:
–  An extended responsibility, including the selection of sourcing organizations,
obtaining staff and performance assessment.
–  A limited responsibility focused on coordination with the permanent roles
outside the project such as the functional manager, the resource deployment
manager and/or the people development manager .
 8.2. Human Resource Planning Processes

• Human resource planning process

includes;
1. Organizational Planning—identifying, documenting,
and assigning project roles, responsibilities, and
reporting relationships.
2. Staff Acquisition—getting the human resources
needed assigned to and working on the project.
3. Team Development—developing individual and
group skills to enhance project performance.
 8.3.Organization Planning

• Organizational planning involves identifying, documenting, and

assigning project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships.
• Roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships may be assigned to
individuals or to groups.
• The individuals and groups may be part of the organization
performing the project or they may be external to it.
• Internal groups are often associated with a specific functional
department such as engineering, marketing, or accounting.
• Organizational planning is often tightly linked with communications
planning since the project’s organizational structure will have a major
effect on the project’s communications requirements.
 8.3.1 Inputs to Organizational Planning

• 1. Project interfaces. Project interfaces generally fall into one of

three categories:
•  Organizational interfaces—formal and informal reporting relationships among different organizational
units. Organizational interfaces may be highly complex or very simple.
• For example, developing a complex telecommunications system may require coordinating numerous
subcontractors over several years, while fixing a programming error in a system installed at a single site may
require little more than notifying the user and the operations staff upon completion.

•  Technical interfaces—formal and informal reporting relationships among different technical disciplines.
• Technical interfaces occur both within project phases (e.g., the site design developed by the civil engineers
must be compatible with the superstructure developed by the structural engineers) and between project phases
(e.g., when an automotive design team passes the results of its work along to the retooling team that must
create the manufacturing capability for the vehicle).
•  Interpersonal interfaces—formal and informal reporting relationships among different individuals
working on the project.
• These interfaces often occur simultaneously, as when an architect employed by a design firm explains key
design considerations to an unrelated construction contractor’s project management team.
• 2. Staffing requirements. Staffing requirements define what kinds of skills are
required from what kinds of individuals or groups and in what time frames. Staffing
requirements are a subset of the overall resource requirements.
• 3. Constraints. Constraints are factors that limit the project team’s options. A
project’s organizational options may be constrained in many ways. Common factors
that may constrain how the team is organized include, but are not limited to, the
following:
•  Organizational structure of the performing organization—an organization whose
basic structure is a strong matrix means a relatively stronger role for the project
manager than one whose basic structure is a weak matrix
•  Collective bargaining agreements—contractual agreements with unions or other
employee groups may require certain roles or reporting relationships (in essence, the
employee group is a stakeholder).
•  Preferences of the project management team—if members of the project
management team have had success with certain structures in the past, they are likely
to advocate similar structures in the future.
•  Expected staff assignments—how the project is organized is often influenced by
the skills and capabilities of specific individuals.
8.3.2. Tools and Techniques for Organizational Planning

• 1. Templates. Although each project is unique, most projects will resemble another
project to some extent. Using the role and responsibility definitions or reporting
relationships of a similar project can help expedite the process of organizational
planning.
• 2. Human resource practices. Many organizations have a variety of policies,
guidelines, and procedures that can help the project management team with various
aspects of organizational planning. For example, an organization that views managers
as ―coaches‖ is likely to have documentation on how the role of ―coach‖ is to be
performed.
• 3. Organizational theory. There is a substantial body of literature describing how
organizations can and should be structured. Although only a small subset of this body
of literature is specifically targeted at project organizations, the project management
team should be generally familiar with the subject of organizational theory so as to be
better able to respond to project requirements.
• 4. Stakeholder analysis. The needs of the various stakeholders should be analyzed to
ensure that their needs will be met.
8.3.3. Outputs from Organizational Planning

• 1. Role and responsibility assignments. Project roles (who does what) and
responsibilities (who decides what) must be assigned to the appropriate project
stakeholders. Roles and responsibilities may vary over time. Most roles and
responsibilities will be assigned to stakeholders who are actively involved in the
work of the project, such as the project manager, other members of the project
management team, and the individual contributors.

• The roles and responsibilities of the project manager are generally critical on most
projects but vary significantly by application area. Project roles and
responsibilities should be closely linked to the project scope definition.
• A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (or RAM) is often used for this purpose. On
larger projects, RAMs may be developed at various levels. For example, a high-
level RAM may define which group or unit is responsible for each element of the
work breakdown structure while lower-level RAMs are used within the group to
assign roles and responsibilities for specific activities to particular individuals.
• 2. Staffing management plan. The staffing management plan describes when and
how human resources will be brought onto and taken off the project team. The
staffing plan may be formal or informal, highly detailed or broadly framed, based
on the needs of the project. It is a subsidiary element of the overall project plan.
• Particular attention should be paid to how project team members (individuals or
groups) will be released when they are no longer needed on the project.
Appropriate reassignment procedures
• 3. Organization chart. An organization chart is any graphic display of project
reporting relationships.
• It may be formal or informal, highly detailed or broadly framed, based on the
needs of the project. For example, the organization chart for a three- to four
person internal service project is unlikely to have the rigor and detail of the
organization chart for a 3,000-person nuclear power plant outage.
• 4. Supporting detail. Supporting detail for
organizational planning varies by application area
and project size. Information frequently supplied
as supporting detail includes, but is not limited to:
• Job descriptions—written outlines by job title of the skills,
responsibilities, knowledge, authority, physical environment,
and other characteristics involved in performing a given job.
Also called position descriptions.
• Training needs—if the staff to be assigned is not expected to
have the skills needed by the project, those skills will need to
be developed as part of the project.
 8.4 STAFF ACQUISITION

• Staff acquisition involves getting the human resources needed (individuals or

groups) assigned to and working on the project. In most environments, the ―best‖
resources may not be available, and the project management team must take care to
ensure that the resources which are available will meet project requirements.
 8.4.1 Inputs to Staff Acquisition

• 1. Staffing management plan. The staffing management plan which includes

the project’s staffing requirements
• 2. Staffing pool description. When the project management team is able to
influence or direct staff assignments, it must consider the characteristics of the
potentially available staff. Considerations include, but are not limited to:
 Previous experience—have the individuals or groups done similar or related
work before? Have they done it well?
–  Personal interests—are the individuals or groups interested in working on this
project?
–  Personal characteristics—are the individuals or groups likely to work well together as
a team?
–  Availability—will the most desirable individuals or groups be available in the
necessary time frames?
• 3. Recruitment practices. One or more of the organizations involved in the
project may have policies, guidelines, or procedures governing staff
assignments. When they exist, such practices act as a constraint on the staff
acquisition process.
 8.4.2. Tools and Techniques for Staff
Acquisition
• 1. Negotiations. Staff assignments must be negotiated on most projects.
For example, the project management team may need to negotiate with:
•  Responsible functional managers to ensure that the project receives
appropriately skilled staff in the necessary time frame.
•  Other project management teams within the performing organization
to assign scarce or specialized resources appropriately.

• The team’s influencing skills play an important role in negotiating staff

assignments as do the politics of the organizations involved. For
example, a functional manager may be rewarded based on staff
utilization. This creates an incentive for the manager to assign available
staff who may not meet all of the project’s requirements.
• 2. Pre-assignment. In some cases, staff may be pre-assigned to the project.
This is often the case when (a) the project is the result of a competitive
proposal and specific staff were promised as part of the proposal, or (b) the
project is an internal service project and staff assignments were defined
within the project charter.
• 3. Resource levelling: a technique for resolving conflicts by delaying tasks.
It is a form of network analysis in which resource management concerns
drive scheduling decisions (start and finish dates). The main purpose of the
resource levelling is to create a smoother distribution of resource usage
• 4. Procurement. Project procurement management can be used to obtain the
services of specific individuals or groups of individuals to perform project
activities. Procurement is required when the performing organization lacks
the in-house staff needed to complete the project (e.g., as a result of a
conscious decision not to hire such individuals as full-time employees, as a
result of having all appropriately skilled staff previously committed to other
projects, or as a result of other circumstances).
 8.4.3. Outputs from Staff Acquisition

• 1. Project staff assigned. The project is staffed

when appropriate people have been reliably assigned
to work on it. Staff may be assigned full-time, part-
time, or variably, based on the needs of the project.
• 2. Project team directory. A project team directory
lists all the project team members and other key
stakeholders. The directory may be formal or
informal, highly detailed or broadly framed, based
on the needs of the project.
 8.5. TEAM DEVELOPMENT
• Team development includes both enhancing the ability of
stakeholders to contribute as individuals as well as enhancing the
ability of the team to function as a team. Individual development
(managerial and technical) is the foundation necessary to
develop the team.
• Development as a team is critical to the project’s ability to meet
its objectives. Team development on a project is often
complicated when individual team members are accountable to
both a functional manager and to the project manager
• Effective management of this dual reporting relationship is often
a critical success factor for the project and is generally the
responsibility of the project manager.
 8.5.1. Inputs to Team Development

• 1. Project staff. The staff assignments implicitly define the

individual skills and team skills available to build upon.
• 2. Project plan. The project plan describes the technical
context within which the team operates.
• 3. Staffing management plan.
• 4. Performance reports. Performance reports provide
feedback to the project team about performance against the
project plan.
• 5. External feedback. The project team must periodically
measure itself against the performance expectations of
those outside the project.
 8.5.2. Tools and Techniques for Team Development

• 1. Team-building activities. Team-building activities include management and

individual actions taken specifically and primarily to improve team
performance. Many actions, such as involving non–management-level team
members in the planning process, or establishing ground rules for surfacing and
dealing with conflict, may enhance team performance as a secondary effect. Team-
building activities can vary from a five-minute agenda item in a regular status
review meeting to an extended, off-site, professionally facilitated experience
designed to improve interpersonal relationships among key stakeholders.
• There is a substantial body of literature on team building. The project management
team should be generally familiar with a variety of team-building activities.
• 2. General management skills. General management skills are of particular
importance to team development.
• 3. Reward and recognition systems. Reward and recognition systems are formal
management actions which promote or reinforce desired behavior. To be effective,
such systems must make the link between performance and reward clear, explicit,
and achievable. For example, a project manager who is to be rewarded for meeting
the project’s cost objective should have an appropriate level of control over staffing
and procurement decisions.
• 4. Collocation. Collocation involves placing all, or almost all, of the most active project team
members in the same physical location to enhance their ability to perform as a team.
Collocation is widely used on larger projects and can also be effective for smaller projects
(e.g., with a ―war room where the team congregates or leaves in process work items).

• 5. Training. Training includes all activities designed to enhance the skills, knowledge, and
capabilities of the project team.
• If the project team members lack necessary management or technical skills, such skills must
be developed as part of the project, or steps must be taken to re-staff the project appropriately.
Direct and indirect costs for training are generally paid by the performing organization.
 5.5.3 Outputs from Team Development
1. Performance improvements. The primary output of team development is
improved project performance.
–  Improvements can come from many sources and can affect many areas of
project performance, for example:
–  Improvements in individual skills may allow a specific person to perform their
assigned activities more effectively.
–  Improvements in team behaviors (e.g., surfacing and dealing with conflict)
may allow project team members to devote a greater percentage of their effort to
technical activities.
–  Improvements in either individual skills or team capabilities may facilitate
identifying and developing better ways of doing project work.

2. Input to performance appraisals. Project staff should generally provide

input to the performance appraisals of any project staff members that they
interact with in a significant way.
 5.5.4. Tools and techniques for managing project teams

• There several tools and techniques that are used to manage project teams;
– 1. Observation and conversation: project can use the management-by-walking-
around style to manage the project team and to observe the project tem at work.
– Informal and formal conversation about how the project is going can provide
crucial information.
– 2. Project performance appraisals: project manager should have performance
contracts for the team
– 3. Conflict management: it is important for project manager to understand
strategies for handling conflicts and to proactively manage conflicts.
– 4. Issues Logs: issues log can be used to document, monitor, and track issues that
needs to resolved by the project team to work effectively. It is important to
acknowledge issues that can hurt the team performance and take action to resolve
them.