One of the questions I’m requested usually after I’m mentoring challenge managers, is what’s the distinction between quality assurance and quality administration?
To be trustworthy, that’s the flawed query to be asking.
Quality administration is the overarching method, idea, precept, approach – no matter you need to name it. It is made up of three parts:
- Quality planning
- Quality control
- Quality assurance.
Quality administration is the time period given to the methods and requirements utilized by the related individuals to obtain a quality outcome on the challenge – in different phrases, how you’re going to be sure to find yourself delivering one thing good (or at the least acceptable).
You can see that we are able to’t actually evaluate quality administration and quality assurance as one (assurance) is a part of the opposite.
However, I do know you continue to need to know the practical variations and similarities to make the phrases stick in your head, so let me provide you with some extra data on every of those, together with some examples from my challenge administration expertise.
Let’s begin with quality planning, as a result of that’s the place we begin on an actual challenge: planning how we’re going to get a quality outcome. I’ll additionally hyperlink the follow again to the PMBOK® Guide and Managing Successful Projects, the most recent PRINCE2 guide.
Quality planning
Quality planning is the work you do in the beginning of the challenge (or all through, if you’re introducing a brand new deliverable later as a part of a change, for instance).
One of the challenge administration ideas in The Standard for Project Management is to construct quality into processes and deliverables. So whereas we plan for it, the purpose is to make it a part of all the pieces we do, constructed into the work as we go.
The actions embrace:
- Identifying the deliverables (which PRINCE2 calls merchandise) and documenting expectations round buyer satisfaction about what quality requirements they may adhere to.
- Identifying and documenting quality necessities, specs and acceptance standards and the way these might be checked e.g. metrics, product verification and validation, audits, testing.
- Coming up with the quality administration method to make sure the challenge crew can meet the expectations, specification and standards set.
- Identifying who will guarantee quality duties are met.
- Setting a quality baseline with the challenge board’s approval.
While you’re discovering out about buyer necessities and documenting all of the issues you’re going to do to guarantee outcome, you’ll even be documenting the tolerances for every deliverable. You’ll additionally discover out about any laws or regulation that the challenge should adjust to throughout this step.
What all this implies is that you simply work out what quality challenge outcome appears to be like like, after which plan how you’re going to get there and who’s going to do the work.
Quality planning instance
I’ll be trustworthy: most of my initiatives don’t have pages of detailed written down necessities. We don’t have the self-discipline of making product descriptions or detailed specs. However, we do set acceptance standards, even when these are solely documented within the challenge constitution or a high-level enterprise request doc.
The quality baseline represents the expectation of the outcome you’ll get on the finish of the challenge, however that may change. For instance, let’s say you’re making a landscaped backyard on your consumer. The consumer asks for 50 species of plant within the backyard and collectively you make an inventory, with a tolerance of +/- 5 species. That’s a quality expectation.
The quality duties are set as follows:
Producer: This is the particular person liable for the deliverable/product/work bundle. In this case, that’s you, the challenge supervisor.
Reviewer: This is the particular person liable for checking the product meets its quality standards. In this case, that’s the consumer’s head gardener.
Acceptance authority: This is the particular person (or group) liable for ultimate log out of the deliverable. In this case, that’s the consumer.
However, in our backyard challenge it seems that you may’t ship 50 species as a result of sure species are too costly/too invasive/don’t develop within the soil that your consumer has. So you modify the spec and plan to ship 40 species as a substitute. This is beneath the tolerance degree so requires a proper change.
The change additionally creates a change to the quality baseline (assuming the challenge board approves the change) as a result of you possibly can’t ship the outcome the consumer wished. There isn’t any corrective approach to apply right here: you possibly can’t change the method to ship a unique outcome. You both have the crops otherwise you don’t.
In a software program challenge, you are able to do product testing, maybe overview the method design and operational methods and tweak what you’re doing to get a unique outcome. For some initiatives, preventative motion is feasible, however you may not have that risk on each challenge.
Quality control
The subsequent facet of quality administration is control. Quality control is the work you do all through the challenge to make it possible for the merchandise created are to the required specification. It’s the method of monitoring and checking quality.
PRINCE2 defines it like this (take a breath earlier than you learn this lengthy sentence):
The procedures to monitor the precise merchandise of a challenge and their improvement or supply actions to decide whether or not they adjust to related requirements and of figuring out methods to decrease causes of unsatisfactory efficiency.
Managing Successful Projects: PRINCE2 seventh version
The actions embrace:
- Doing the quality checking duties (i.e. implementing no matter quality administration method you deliberate for).
- Being conscious of and appearing on conditions the place the quality of merchandise will not be up to customary, together with steady enchancment.
- Getting approval for the deliverables created.
Quality control will provide help to spot faulty merchandise. If you consider software program testing, the testing crew is there to cease bugs making it into the ultimate model. They spot quality points earlier than they attain the consumer to allow them to be resolved.
Quality control instance
In our backyard instance, as soon as the rockery is full, the challenge supervisor would ask the consumer to log out the completed product. The consumer compares what was delivered to the specification supplied and approves the deliverable. In follow, the challenge supervisor will have already got carried out that comparability and checked out that what they’ve delivered meets the spec.
We additionally put in a fountain, and there’s a requirement to meet the suitable requirements for water quality. To verify that, we rent an professional. Their quality control course of includes checking the water every single day for a month. The lab analyses the water and indicators off that the fountain is compliant with requirements. They present certification as proof.
Luckily for us, we already documented that we would wish a testing lab to certify this deliverable as we figured that out throughout the strategy planning stage. We deliberate for the lab prices in our challenge finances.
If the water didn’t meet passable minimal necessities, we might take corrective motion.
Quality assurance
Quality assurance the method of checking that the plans and method are match for function. Think of it as a confidence-boosting train for people who find themselves not shut to the supply work however want reassurance that it’s going to plan.
The actions embrace principally simply that:
- Ensuring that the planning and control approaches are strong sufficient to ship the anticipated outcomes.
PRINCE2 defines efficient quality assurance like this:
A deliberate and systematic exercise that gives confidence that merchandise will meet their outlined quality specs when examined below quality control.
Managing Successful Projects: PRINCE2 seventh version
In different phrases, it’s the method of creating positive defects can’t occur (or are unlikely to occur) since you’ve carried out job of planning, constructing, checking within the first place.
Assurance is often carried out by somebody who will not be within the challenge crew. It’s an unbiased perform because it seeks to verify we’re doing the precise factor. Often the perform is supplied by the PMO or one other enterprise crew.
Quality assurance instance
I’ve by no means had anybody say to me that my challenge administration plans wouldn’t find yourself delivering a outcome that meets the quality standards. Quality assurance is one a part of challenge assurance, and it’s all about checking that issues are carried out proper.
In our backyard instance, you can think about that one other challenge supervisor from our firm opinions our plans and feedback that if we put the pond the place we’ve deliberate, it will flood the walled vegetable backyard each winter, and that wouldn’t be the precise factor to do.
“Aha!” we are saying. And we transfer the pond.
Later, that different challenge supervisor visits once more and checks we actually have moved the pond.
Quality assurance vs challenge assurance
Project assurance is a a lot wider topic than merely quality assurance, so don’t confuse the 2.
Quality assurance is all about ensuring the challenge deliverables are a adequate customary and that the crew follows all the nice follow and plans they laid out. It ought to be carried out by somebody unbiased from the challenge who can maintain them to account and maintain them trustworthy.
Project assurance checks that the entire challenge is being carried out in the precise approach. Their function in quality assurance is to:
- Advise the challenge supervisor on something to do with quality e.g. based mostly on previous initiatives or finest follow
- Check that the approaches and control mechanisms proposed are literally going to ship the outcomes anticipated, and supply that degree of confidence to the challenge board
- Check in commonly to be sure that what the challenge crew mentioned they’d do, they’re truly doing.
The assurance perform holds the crew accountable if they don’t ship.
Differences between quality assurance and quality control
It’s frequent to get quality assurance and quality control confused.
Quality control is about controlling the supply of the product and checking it’s match for function throughout the making of it. This is the place you discover the defects and repair them.
Quality assurance goals to stop the defects from occurring within the first place by making a tradition of quality.
How to doc your quality administration method/plan
PRINCE2 talks about writing the quality administration method within the challenge initiation doc. The PMBOK® Guide talks about making a quality administration plan that’s a part of the general challenge or program administration plan.
Either approach, you probably have inside quality requirements, you possibly can reference them or hyperlink to the intranet web page the place readers can discover out extra. Don’t make the doc longer than you’ve got to by repeating your self.
If you don’t have something you possibly can reference to save your self a job, right here’s what to embrace.
Scope: Describe what work is roofed by the scope of the quality administration method. It’s in all probability simpler to describe what’s excluded, as just about all the pieces is probably going to be coated. Who doesn’t need their challenge outcome to be an inexpensive quality?
Procedures: Describe the method for control e.g. “Product quality will be reviewed internally by the project team before being reviewed by the client’s team and signed off by the project sponsor on confirmation that they meet the specification.” Document what change control course of you’ll use as nicely (in all probability the usual challenge change control course of).
Resources and duties: List out who does what (a RACI matrix is sweet for this) and any non-human assets required.
Tools and methods: List out how you’re going to verify quality e.g. what testing strategies or statistical methods might be used, what product sampling sizes you’ll use and so forth. Split out quality assurance and quality control methods.
Standards: Document any overarching quality requirements and protocols the challenge has to stick to. You may also put PMO requirements in right here, like references to the templates you’ll use to create a log of deliverables (the quality register in PRINCE2). Link to any customary working procedures.
Finish off with an inventory of any additional studying or references like every inside coverage paperwork or a word concerning the quality administration system software program that might be used you probably have any.
Project quality administration within the PMBOK® Guide
PMBOK 7 truly has little or no in it that mandates how to method quality. However, Process Groups: A Practice Guide does have all the data in about how to ‘do’ quality administration. There are 3 processes:
Plan quality administration: that is the method of making the quality plan described above
Manage quality: this course of is about assurance and course of enhancements
Control quality: this course of is about recording the outcomes of actions like testing to make sure the outputs are match for function and meet buyer expectations.
The quality steadiness
The unlucky reality is that quality prices cash. Doing extra testing, checking, auditing, validation, having individuals educated to a better customary… all of it prices cash.
There’s a steadiness for the challenge crew and key stakeholders to strike between spending a great deal of cash on quality and getting a ‘good enough’ final result.
Next steps
If you’ve obtained this far, you’re in all probability planning how you’re going to ‘do’ quality in your challenge. Here are some practical subsequent steps to get going:
- Talk to stakeholders about their expectations of quality.
- Check the enterprise case or every other initiation documentation to see what quality standards have already been talked about.
- Talk about tolerances: are there any which might be acceptable? Often there should not, or they aren’t simple to negotiate.
Document what you discover after which work out how you’re going to obtain that. Cross-reference the plan and ensure there are duties that enable you to ship on these necessities – verify you’ve got a approach to construct them in and check them.
