saurabh mahajanPMP, ITIL, PRINCE2| vodafonePune, Maharashtra, India
Quality should be attitude and not attribute.
best is to follow a checklist ... simple and quick
but along with that a sense of responsibility should also be agreed. Like to take review mail from responsible person that checklist was followed, review mail from peer that checklist item where randomly verified. Thus people will start taking checklist seriously and any quality flaw can be responsibility of particular person or group.
Other way can be random quality audit with the manager thus making them direct responsible for failing quality audit.
Quality KPI's having financial impact to project or people is one more way to make people serious about quality Saving Changes...
In most cases, I think the Quality Management System is a Necessity, but we have to manage it effectively so that it is not perceived as a Nuisance Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
It is the million dollar question. First thing is to understand what quality is. There is a lot about quality outside there that you have to read and understand from Juran, Demming, Ishikawa, Feigenbaum, Shewart, etc. Second, you have to understand that the focus of the project manager is project quality. Project quality is defined from product quality, Third, remember you have two main activities: quality assurance and quality control. You have to put your focus on the first one and you have to sell the idea of assurance as a mean to help all the team to gain more free time because if you implement quality assurance well that is what you gain. The problem I saw from years is that most of the time people perform quality assurance activities like a police woman/man. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
As a project manager you have to make sure to build in quality assurance into your project. It's unfortunate that software development projects seem to only consider quality control which is so late in the project that it becomes the impediment to finishing the project.
You have to push for audits, peer reviews, walkthroughs and traceability. If you have the chance, build it into the initial budgets so nobody complain of the additional cost. Saving Changes...
Like Sergio mentioned, people perform quality assurance activities like a police woman/man. It is this sort of behaviour that makes the process repulsive for other team members. It appears to them as if the quality manager is there to create hurdles for them. From little experience I have, I have found that quality manager is not considered as a team member. He/she is considered to be as someone from the management doing their bidding.
I'm of the view that the environment of 'on job training' has led to this. A person will join a team and will start working 'as is told' or 'as others are/have been doing'. It's not that they do everything wrong. They work and they deliver but quite many processes are not followed. They do not know that there is a actual process laid down in words to assist people in doing their job. They find out about the process only if they are lucky enough to go through an audit. Saving Changes...
Al TaylorI.T. Contractor| IndependentWaterloo, Ontario, Canada
good discussion...great posts!
@ Saurabh....agreed....checklists can be very useful quality tools Saving Changes...
S.SHANMUGA SAMYEx. Chief General Manager| O.N.G.C.LtdChennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Quality is assured by compliance to the pre-determined set or sequence of processes towards realising end product. So, QA is the responsibility of the Team as a whole, though one of them may be selected to be a representative only.Quality Control ensures that only the planned Quality Product reaches to the end user/consumer. This role can be given to a non-member of the team (outsider) preferably to be selected by the Project Manager.Depending upon the size/complexity of the Project, QA and QC may be managed by a group of people instead of one. Thus when one/few among us is made as responsible for QA it will be pleasurable to perform better. Saving Changes...
Should introduce Quality Management System and maintain the quality throughout the project in both perspective Quality assurance and quality control. Saving Changes...
