Quality Management Plan: Ensuring Project Deliverables Meet Customer Expectations, Lecture notes of Quality Management

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Quality Management Plan

Version X.XX

Instructions to the Author: This is a template for developing a Quality Management Plan. The template includes instructions to the author, boilerplate text, and fields that should be replaced with the values and information specific to the project. Blue text enclosed in boxes provides instructions to the document author, or describes the intent, assumptions, and context of the annotated section. This instructional text should be removed from the final document to make the plan more readable. Text enclosed in angle brackets () indicates a field that should be replaced with information specific to a project. The author should set the style of the text inserted to replace the bracketed text appropriately. Text and tables with content prefaced with e.g., are provided as examples of wording and/or formats that may be used or modified as required to support a specific project. The information and outline is a suggestion to assist in developing project documents; they are not mandatory formats. The author should tailor the content of the document to fit the project this work product will support.

Purpose of the Quality Management Plan: The Quality Management Plan documents the strategy that will be used to ensure Quality Assurance (QA) activities are effectively implemented and executed by the project team. The plan describes how the QA team will ensure the project team consistently delivers products that meet customer requirements through inspection of deliverables and oversight of compliance with department project management processes. The Quality Management Plan includes the scope, milestones, budget assumptions, dependencies, risks, participants, procedures, and required deliverables. The objective of the Quality Management Plan is to clearly outline the QA activities and responsibilities:

• Ensure the entire scope of the plan will be completed
• All activities specified in the plan will be executed within the scheduled timeframes
• Plan activities will remain within the QA budget
• Escalation process for resolving any quality related conflicts or issues is established

Remove this page from the final document.

Quality Management Plan

Overview

Provide an overview of the quality management strategy the project will apply to ensure deliverables meet the expectations of sponsors, stakeholders, end-users, and other clients. Include an outline of the process or methods to be applied to ensure continuous improvement, prevention of non-conformities, and track and address customer satisfaction concerns. This strategy will guide the project team to the standards they need to follow to ensure success of the project. Remove this comment section from the final document.

E.g., The purpose of the Quality Management Plan is to confirm that a quality product is delivered that conforms to contract requirements and meets the needs of the customer. The Quality Management process is iterative and incremental. The process encompasses quality requirements identification, planning, implementation, and execution of the plan. Once the plan is operational, the Quality Assurance (QA) team leverages the plan to assess, measure, monitor, and continually improve the plan.

The plan is developed and approved during the project planning phase to confirm major deliverable/milestone acceptance criteria and manage approved project processes through the life of the project. The QA team will provide verification and validation of all project deliverables to be completed by the team. The QA Lead will be responsible for

• Tracking, assessing, and ensuring all deliverables are in alignment with the sponsor’s expectations for quality
• Inspecting and commenting on all draft and final project document deliverables for traceability, correctness, and fidelity to the project requirements backlog
• Securing sign-off from all required persons and/or agencies for completed deliverables

Methodology

Provide an overview of the project quality management methods to be applied to meet the quality management strategy detailed above. Remove this comment section from the final document.

E.g., A successful Quality Management Plan outlines the methods that will be implemented to support all aspects of quality management within a project; at minimum, these aspects include Quality Assurance, Quality Control, Deliverable Acceptance, and Process Audits.

Quality Assurance QA is the set of activities the project team will pursue to ensure quality in the processes by which products are developed. QA aims to prevent defects with a focus on the process used to make the product. It is a proactive quality process. The goal of QA is

Quality Management Plan

to improve development and test processes so that defects do not arise when the product is being developed. Verification is an example of QA. Provide an overview of the planned quality activities for the project. Remove this comment section from the final document.

E.g., QA focuses on the processes used to create project deliverables. Examples of quality assurance include processes like peer review, process checklists, project audits, and methodology and standards development. QA focuses on the prevention of quality problems through planned and systematic activities performed throughout the project life cycle, including documentation. While the QA team is responsible for establishing a good quality management system and assessing its adequacy, the project team is responsible for implementing it. Everyone on the team involved in developing the product is responsible for quality assurance. The QA activities the project team will implement to ensure quality are…

Quality Control Quality Control (QC) is the set of project activities for ensuring quality in products. These activities focus on identifying defects in the actual products produced. QC aims to identify (and correct) defects in the finished product. Quality control, therefore, is a reactive process. The goal of QC is to identify defects after a product is developed and before it's released. Validation/Software Testing is an example of QC. Remove this comment section from the final document.

E.g., The purpose of Quality Control (QC) is to find and eliminate sources of quality non-conformities using tools & equipment to ensure the customer's expectations for the quality of the project deliverables are systematically and continually met. QC activities or techniques are used to achieve and maintain the product quality, process, and service. QC is the responsibility of the team that tests the product for defects. Testing early and often is a basic quality control strategy. The QC activities the project team will implement to ensure quality are…

Project Audits Project auditing is the processes for conducting detailed inspection of the management of a project, its methodology, its techniques, its procedures, its documents, its properties, its budgets, its expenses, and its level of completion. Project audits of projects may be conducted at the transition from one phase of a project to another. A project audit is a key step in the process of closing a project. The closing audit evaluates the total project processes and outcomes and is required for all projects. Provide an overview of the project audit plan, including general schedule and key areas to be audited. Use the Quality Audit Log template in Appendix A for tracking audit non-conformities. Remove this comment section from the final document.

E.g., To ensure a well-managed and controlled project, a light-weight audit process will be applied to project activities and tasks. The project audit strategy will be to implement audit activities that are simple, systematic, and iterative. The audit plan will examine and analyze the project team’s execution of project processes to identify any issues, concerns, challenges, and/or opportunities and report them to the project manager to address. The goal of the audit process is to maximize the success of a project. The process is intended to complete the following general objectives:

• Ensure that project decision making is effective (every decision made produces a desire outcome)
• Project activities are adequately performed and managed
• Project governance and risk management meet business requirements

Roles & Responsibilities

List the primary roles of the project staff as it relates to the practice of project Quality Management. Indicate point-of-contact and contact email. Remove this instruction text from the final document.

E.g., The roles for quality assurance, control, coordination, or facilitation are listed below:

Quality Management Plan

# Project Document Deliverables Milestone Date Comments

Escalation Define the escalation path for unresolved quality noncompliance issues both internal and external to the project. Provide an overview of the escalation process the QA team will follow for managing project quality. Detail any dependencies or prerequisites required to meet for each level of escalation.

E.g., The process owner will review suggested corrective actions for each identified process or work product nonconformity and will work with the QA team and the Program Manager to ensure a corrective action has been established that will address the identified process nonconformities. The Process Owner will inform the project management team of the corrective actions. Depending on the number of participants and time needed to execute the corrective actions the project manager will determine if the recommended corrective actions should be placed on the schedule. Progress made against any corrective actions and corrective action priority are placed on the program schedule and reported via the regular program status meetings.

If the process owner disagrees with any of the corrective actions or the QA manager disagrees with proposed modifications to the actions, they may escalate the disagreement to the Project Manager or the Director of Quality Assurance to make an informed decision.

If a customer identifies a problem or the QA team needs the customer to assist in resolving a problem, then the customer is involved through the resolution. The customer will also be consulted and involved if the problem affects scope and schedule.

Metrics

Quality Metrics must be defined, collected, and analyzed to facilitate the monitoring of program/project objectives. Detailed metric data gathering is conducted by the QA team and delivered to the Project Manager for key QA tasks and activities to identify trends, reflect performance, and highlight issues for resolution and problem avoidance. These metrics should be reviewed regularly during status meetings and on an ad-hoc basis as urgency requires. Examples of metrics to be gathered are document issues, code defects, testing defects, and operations defects. Define the Quality Metrics that will be collected and presented by the QA team to the Project Manager for project status reporting. Remove this comment section from the final document.

E.g., The QA team will apply suitable methods for monitoring and, where applicable, measurement of the quality management system processes. These methods will demonstrate the ability of the processes to achieve planned results. If planned results are not achieved, correction and corrective action will be recommended for action, as appropriate. Metrics to be collected include

• Development testing defects
• UAT defects
• Customer satisfaction survey results
• Schedule variance
• Requirement Analysis Metrics
• Process Audit Metrics

Compliance and Certification

Detail any compliance or certification requirements that must be met before the solution can become operational (i.e. Federal or State statue’s, conditional standards, etc.). Remove this comment section from the final document.

Quality Management Plan

Schedule

Provide an overview of critical quality management milestones with dependencies that interface with the Project Manager’s project schedule. Remove this comment section from the final document.

Approvals

Identify by name, title, and signature the individuals agreeing to authorize expenditure of organizational resources to accomplish the project activities. At a minimum, the Quality Management Plan should be signed by the Project Manager, the Project Sponsor, the Quality Assurance Lead and, if applicable, the Executive Sponsor. Remove this comment section from the final document.

Role Name & Title Signature Date