5.  Quality Management

1.

Leadership Reason 5 – Quality. No one wants the situation shown here.

So the first step in managing quality is to establish the right attitude i.e. that the quality of the product is important. And this attitude must be maintained throughout the life of the project.

This in turn demands quality workmanship from all organizations responsible for conducting the project.

To accomplish this, corporate management must put in place planned and systematic actions that will provide confidence that the resulting product will indeed satisfy the established quality requirements.

This is called Quality Assurance.

2.

In practice, quality is another variable like scope that must be managed.

Managing quality starts with deciding the grade required for the final product, on a scale from utilitarian to luxurious

3.

Having selected the grade, the quality of workmanship to the required standards must be emphasized throughout the execution phase of the project life span.

And whatever the grade, a focus on quality workmanship is essential throughout the organization, or all organizations, in producing the resulting product.

4.

By the same token, as well as the workmanship, it is also essential to focus on ensuring the right materials and components are assembled into the resulting product.

And that these components are arranged in the best possible way.

5.

Having established these standards or requirements for maximum effectiveness, you then use them to plan and contain the amount of work involved in producing the final product. The aim is for efficiency in production.

That's because the more work that is involved, the more costly the final product will be.

To achieve these objectives you simply apply the world famous Demming approach to quality. It is quite simple:

• Plan – Decide on what you intend to do and how thorough
• Do – Get on with it
• Check – See that you actually did what you intended to do
• Act – Fix it if you didn't, or improve on it if you can.

6.

Never overlook the fact that in the final analysis the success of the project will be assessed on the basis of

• The quality of the end results
• How well the resulting product(s) perform, and
• For how long.

7.

Some people think that it is difficult to measure success. The real problem is that there are so many different ways to measure it.

As examples:

Project success

• How complete the product is in terms of functionality, and/or other attributes
• How well the results meet the original intentions or specifications
• The time taken to complete the project
• The cost of carrying it out

Product success

• The correct choice of product grade
• The safety of the product in use
• The extent to which the original problem has actually been solved
• Benefit(s) to the owner and user(s), often measured as Return on Investment

And so on.