Chapter 10 Managing Project Quality

Definitions of Quality and Grade

QualityDegree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements. is a relative term, which means that something is of high or low quality compared to what it is required to be. According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), quality is “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements.”International Organization for Standardization, Quality Management Systems—Fundamentals and Vocabulary (Geneva: ISO Press, 2005), in Project Management Institute, Inc., A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 4th ed. (Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, Inc., 2008), 190. The requirements of a product or process can be categorized or given a gradeCategory of product or service requirements.. The quality is determined by how well something meets the requirements of its grade. Consider the following examples.

For most people, the term quality also implies good value—getting your money’s worth. For example, even low-grade products should still work as expected, be safe to use, and last a reasonable amount of time.

Statistics Terminology

Determining how well products meet grade requirements is done by taking measurements and then interpreting those measurements. StatisticsMathematical interpretation of numerical data.—the mathematical interpretation of numerical data—is useful when interpreting large numbers of measurements and is used to determine how well the product meets a specification when the same product is made repeatedly. Measurements made on samples of the product must be between control limitsUpper and lower extremes of allowable variation.—the upper and lower extremes of allowable variation—and it is up to management to design a process that will consistently produce products between those limits.

If a process is designed to produce a product of a certain size or other measured characteristic, it is impossible to control all the small factors that can cause the product to differ slightly from the desired measurement. Some of these factors will produce products that have measurements that are larger than desired and some will have the opposite effect. If several random factors are affecting the process, they tend to offset each other most of the time, and the most common results are near the middle of the range. This idea is called the central limit theoremIdea that if variation is caused by several random factors, they will generally cancel each other out and most measurements will be near the middle of the range of variation..

If the range of possible measurement values is divided equally into subdivisions called binsEqual size ranges into which measurements are sorted to obtain a frequency distribution., the measurements can be sorted, and the number of measurements that fall into each bin can be counted. The result is a frequency distributionThe number of measurements that fall into defined bins. that shows how many measurements fall into each bin. If the effects that are causing the differences are random and tend to offset each other, the frequency distribution is called a normal distributionFrequency distribution that looks like a bell and is the result of offsetting random variations., which resembles the shape of a bell with edges that flare out. The edges of a theoretical normal distribution curve get very close to zero but do not reach zero.

If the measurements of product samples are distributed equally above and below the center of the distribution as they are in Figure 10.1 "Normal Distribution of Measurements of Gasoline Samples", the average of those measurements is also the center value that is called the meanAverage found by summing the values and dividing by the number of values. and is represented in formulas by the lowercase Greek letter µ (pronounced mu). The amount of difference of the measurements from the central value is called the sample standard deviation or just the standard deviationA type of average that takes into account positive and negative values where a sample is used instead of all the measurements. To calculate the standard deviation, first the difference between each value and the mean is squared. The squared values are summed and divided by the number of values minus one. The square root of this value is the standard deviation, also known as the Sample Standard Deviation.. The first step in calculating the standard deviation is subtracting each measurement from the central value and then squaring that difference. (Recall from your mathematics courses that squaring a number is multiplying it by itself and that the result is always positive.) The next step is to sum these squared values and divide by the number of values minus one. The last step is to take the square root. The result can be thought of as an average difference. (If you had used the usual method of taking an average, the positive and negative numbers would have summed to zero.) Mathematicians represent the standard deviation with the lowercase Greek letter σ (pronounced sigma). If all the elements of a group are measured, it is called the standard deviation of the population and the second step does not use a minus one.

For normal distributions, about 68.3 percent of the measurements fall within one standard deviation on either side of the mean. This is a useful rule of thumb for analyzing some types of data. If the variation between measurements is caused by random factors that result in a normal distribution and someone tells you the mean and the standard deviation, you know that a little over two-thirds of the measurements are within a standard deviation on either side of the mean. Because of the shape of the curve, the number of measurements within two standard deviations is 95.4 percent, and the number of measurements within three standard deviations is 99.7 percent. For example, if someone said the average (mean) height for adult men in the United States is 5 feet 10 inches (70 inches) and the standard deviation is about 3 inches, you would know that 68 percent of the men in the United States are between five feet seven inches (67 inches) and six feet one inch (73 inches) in height. You would also know that about 95 percent of the adult men in the United States were between five feet four inches and six feet four inches tall, and that almost all of them (99.7 percent) are between five feet one inches and six feet seven inches tall. These figures are referred to as the 68-95-99.7 ruleApproximate percentages of measurements that are within one, two, and three standard deviations of the mean..

Some products must have less variability than others to meet their purpose. For example, if one machine drills a hole and another machine shapes a rod that will slide through the hole, it might be very important to be sure that if the smallest hole was ever matched with the widest rod, that the rod would still fit. Three standard deviations from the control limits might be fine for some products but not for others. In general, if the mean is six standard deviations from both control limits, the likelihood of a part exceeding the control limits from random variation is practically zero (2 in 1,000,000,000). Refer to Figure 10.4 "Meaning of Sigma Levels".

Statistical Control Before World War II

Prior to the late 1700s, products such as firearms and clocks were made as individual works where the parts were adjusted to each other so they could work together. If a part broke, a new one had to be made by hand to fit. In 1790 in France, Honoré Blanc demonstrated that he could make musket parts so nearly identical that a musket could be assembled from bins of parts chosen at random.Ken Alder, “Innovation and Amnesia: Engineering Rationality and the Fate of Interchangeable Parts Manufacturing in France,” Technology and Culture 38, no 2 (April 1997): 273–311. The practice of making parts to a high level of accuracy in their dimensions and finishes made the parts interchangeable. The use of interchangeable parts became the founding principle of assembly line manufacturing to produce all manner of goods from sewing machines to automobiles. The manufacturers of firearms and weapons were often the leaders in improving quality because reliable and safe operation of weapons and their rapid repair is a matter of life and death.

Statistical Control in the United States During World War II

During World War II, factories were converted from manufacturing consumer goods to weapons. War plants had to make large numbers of parts as fast as possible while doing it safely for the workers and for the service members who used them. Important improvements in quality control (QC)Management of production standards through statistical interpretation of random product measurements.—the management of production standards through statistical interpretation of random product measurements, which emphasizes consistency and accuracy—were made during this period. A key figure in the history of quality management who was an important person in the war effort was Walter Shewhart at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Shewhart recognized that real processes seldom behaved like theoretical random distributions and tended to change with time. He separated causes of variation into two categories: chance causeVariation due to random events. and assignable causeVariations that can be attributed to a particular event or influence.. Chance causes could be ignored if they did not cause too much variation, and trying to eliminate them often made the problem worse, but assignable causes could be fixed. To help distinguish between variations caused by random events and trends that indicated assignable causes, Shewhart introduced the control chartScatter chart with time on the horizontal axis and measurement scale on the vertical axis. It also displays the mean and control limits. It may mark two standard deviations from the mean., which is also known as a type of run chartChart of measurements that shows variations as the process progresses in time. because data are collected while the process is running. A control chart has time on the bottom axis and a plot of sample measurements. The mean, upper control limit, lower control limit, and warning lines that are two sigma from the mean are indicated by horizontal lines.

Deming and Postwar Japan

The most influential person in modern quality control was an American who was a hero in Japan but virtually unknown in the United States. W. Edwards Deming worked with Shewhart at Bell Labs and helped apply Shewhart’s ideas to American manufacturing processes during World War II. Following the war, American factories returned to the production of consumer goods. Many of the other major manufacturing centers in the world had been damaged by bombing during the war and took time to recover. Without the safety needs of wartime and with little competition, quality control was not a high priority for American companies.John Dowd, “How the Japanese Learned to Compete,” Asia Times, October 27, 2006, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/HJ27Dh01.html (accessed August 11, 2009). Management in the United States focused on increasing production to meet demand and lowering costs to increase profits.

After the war, while the United States occupied Japan, Deming was asked by the U.S. Department of the Army to assist with the statistics of the 1950 census in Japan. Kenichi Koyanagi, the managing director of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers and a very influential industrialist, asked Deming to speak to twenty-one top industrial leaders on the topic of global strategy for Japanese industry. Deming went beyond Shewhart’s work and talked about his philosophy of quality manufacturing and how the responsibility for quality begins with management. He explained that a corporate culture devoted to producing high-quality products would result in less waste, lower costs, greater client loyalty, and greater market share. With Koyanagi’s support, Deming’s ideas were widely adopted by these influential leaders.

Deming described his philosophy as a system of profound knowledge, which has four parts:

1. Appreciation of a system. Understanding how suppliers, producers, and clients interact
2. Knowledge of variation. Understanding statistical variation
3. Theory of knowledge. Understanding what can be known and what cannot
4. Knowledge of psychology. Understanding human nature

In 1950, the Japanese created the Deming prizeAward for quality in Japan named after W. Edwards Deming, an American. in Deming’s honor, which is awarded to an individual and a company for major advances in quality improvements. In 1960, Deming was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Second Class by the Prime Minister on behalf of Emperor Hirohito.

Quality Management in America

By the 1970s, Japanese companies had a reputation for high quality and were taking market share from American companies, but Deming’s teachings were virtually unknown in his own country. It was not until 1980 that America became aware of Deming when his work was described in an NBC documentary titled If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?John Dowd, “How the Japanese Learned to Compete,” Asia Times, October 27, 2006, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/HJ27Dh01.html (accessed August 11, 2009). By then, Deming was eighty years old and the producer of the show originally assumed he was dead.Thomas J. Boardman, “The Statistician Who Changed the World: W. Edwards Deming, 1900–1993,” The American Statistician 48 (August 1994): 179–87.

In 1982, Deming’s book was published and later retitled Out of Crisis, in 1986.W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (Boston: MIT Press, 1982). It was aimed at explaining his system to American manufacturers and the American public. In the book, Deming described fourteen principles of management to guide the implementation of his philosophy. Some of them were challenges to Western managers and very different from the thinking that was prevalent at the time. In brief, they are as follows:

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service.
2. Adopt a new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for a change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service to improve quality and productivity and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity.
11. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.

Between 1979 and 1982, Ford Motor Company lost $3 billion, and they were looking for solutions to their problems. They chose to apply Deming’s approach to develop the new Taurus-Sable model and by 1986 had become the most profitable American auto company.Society of Manufacturing Engineers, “Ford Embraces Six-Sigma Quality Goals,” June 13, 2001, http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/get-press.pl?&&20012513&ND&&SME& (accessed August 13, 2009).

Ford adopted a Japanese approach to quality known in America as total quality management (TQM)Philosophy of managing quality adapted from a Japanese method that includes kaizen, atarimae hinshitsu, kansei, and miryokuteki hinshitsu.. TQM in Japan has four major components:

1. KaizenJapanese term for involvement of all members of the group (see total quality management).. Improvement must involve all members of a company.Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. “Total Quality Control,” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1387304/Total-Quality-Control (accessed August 13, 2009).
2. Atarimae hinshitsuJapanese concept of making things work as they are intended to work (See total quality management).. Make things work the way they are supposed to work.NationMaster.com, “Miryokuteki Hinshitsu,” 2005, http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Miryokuteki-Hinshitsu (accessed August 14, 2009).
3. KanseiJapanese concept of learning from the way a user applies the product in order to improve it (see total quality management).. Learn from the way a user applies the product to make improvements.WASEDA University, “Kansei Quality,” http://www.tqm.mgmt.waseda.ac.jp/study/kansei_e.html (accessed June 20, 2010).
4. Miryokuteki hinshitsuJapanese concept that things should have an aesthetic quality and be pleasing to use (see total quality management).. Things should have an aesthetic quality and be pleasing to use.NationMaster.com, “Miryokuteki Hinshitsu,” 2005, http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Miryokuteki-Hinshitsu (accessed August 14, 2009).

According to Peter B. Petersen,Peter B. Petersen, “Total Quality Management and the Deming Approach to Quality Management,” Journal of Management History 5, no. 8 (1999): 468–88. TQM differs from the Deming approach in four fundamental ways:

1. The Deming approach represents one philosophy that is used in its entirety or not at all. In contrast, TQM can be tailored to a particular environment.
2. Both agree that a long-term commitment is required by top management. However, Deming would drop clients if they started to wane, while TQM consultants were less demanding.
3. Deming insists on constancy of purpose, while TQM adapts to the situation, which results in lack of constancy.
4. Deming requires adoption of his principles of profound knowledge, while TQM lacks this unified philosophy.

Many poorly qualified consulting firms provided training in TQM to American companies. The approach worked in some cases but not in others where it was applied superficially, and the movement’s credibility was diminished.

Another approach to quality management in the United States was formulated at Motorola in 1986 and was named Six Sigma (6σ)Quality management system that give titles to specialists and requires a cost-benefit analysis.. The Six Sigma practices were based on Deming’s work, TQM, and others and had similarities regarding continuous efforts at improvement involving everyone at the company. It emphasized a clear focus on achieving quantifiable financial returns from any Six Sigma project. To determine the financial return on a quality initiative, the cost of quality (COQ)Cost of preventing low quality offset by the cost of producing low quality. must be determined. The cost of quality has two parts: the cost of prevention and the cost of failure (or nonconformance). The cost of quality is the difference between the additional money spent on prevention and the corresponding reduction in the cost of failure.

• Cost of prevention

  1. Cost of conformance. Cost to improve quality
  2. Cost of appraisal. Cost to measure and evaluate quality

• Cost of failure

  1. Internal costs. Repairing bad parts before shipment or retooling a manufacturing line to reduce failures
  2. External costs. Managing returns, lawsuits, product recalls

Six Sigma identified individuals as experts in quality and awarded titles like Champion and Master Black Belt. The name Six Sigma refers to a process that has six standard deviations from the mean to either control limit that would ensure virtually zero defects. (In practice, the Six Sigma approach allows for a 1.5 sigma drift, so it is really a 4.5 sigma standard that allows approximately 3.4 defects per million products.) This approach was adopted by Jack Welch at General Electric with great success. By the late 1990s, about two-thirds of the top five hundred companies in the United States had begun Six Sigma projects, including Ford, which had allowed its quality programs to slip. To provide encouragement and a consistent standard, the U.S. government created the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality AwardU.S. award for quality named after a former secretary of commerce. in 1987 to encourage companies to improve quality; the award was named for Malcolm Baldrige who was the U.S. secretary of commerce from 1981 to 1987.National Institute of Standards and Technology, “Frequently Asked Questions about the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award,” November 25, 2008, http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/baldfaqs.htm (accessed August 14, 2009). The criteria used to determine award winners are as follows:

1. Leadership of senior executives
2. Strategic planning
3. Customer and market focus
4. Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management
5. Workforce focus
6. Process management
7. Results

Trade and International Standards

Trade between countries increased as countries recovered from WWII and began producing consumer goods. In 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established the rules for international trade in the postwar world. Through years of negotiations based on GATT, the World Trade Organization (WTO)Negotiating forum for improving trade relationships between countries. was created in 1995. The WTO is a negotiating forum where governments can discuss ways to help trade flow as freely as possible.World Trade Organization, “Understanding the WTO: Basics,” http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact1_e.htm (accessed August 14, 2009).

Increases in trade forced companies to improve the quality of their products to compete for clients and to exchange parts reliably between companies that used parts suppliers. To assist in developing standards for quality that would be the same between countries, an organization of 158 national standards groups formed the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)Degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements., which is headquartered in Switzerland. For example, a company might require a parts supplier to meet certain ISO standards if it wants to bid on contracts. There are thousands of ISO standards, and they are grouped by their numbers. The ISO 9000 group of standards relate to quality:

• ISO 9000. Fundamentals and vocabulary for this group of quality standards.

• ISO 9001. Standards for evaluating the quality management processes in an organization. It has five parts:

  1. Overall requirements for the quality management system and documentation
  2. Management responsibility, focus, policy, planning and objectives
  3. Resource management and allocation
  4. Product realization and process management
  5. Measurement, monitoring, analysis, and improvement
• ISO 9004. Ways to extend benefits of ISO 9001 to employees, owners, suppliers, partners, and society in general. It is a guide for top management for overall quality improvement.
• ISO 9011. Guidance for auditing a quality system.

Recommended steps for implementing a quality management system (QMS) are as follows:

1. Fully engage top management.
2. Identify key processes and the interactions needed to meet quality objectives.
3. Implement and manage the QMS and its processes.
4. Build your ISO 9001-based QMS.
5. Implement the system, train company staff, and verify effective operation of your processes.
6. Manage your QMS—focus on client satisfaction, strive for continual improvement.
7. If necessary, seek third-party certification and registration of the QMS, or alternatively, issue a self-declaration of conformity.International Organization for Standardization, Quality Management Systems—Fundamentals and Vocabulary (Geneva: ISO Press, 2005), in Project Management Institute, Inc., A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 4th ed. (Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, Inc., 2008).

Similarities

All successful quality programs have (1) a requirement for commitment to quality by all the employees and their partners and (2) an emphasis on error prevention and client satisfaction. To comply with TQM, Six Sigma, ISO, or other quality standards required by the client or by the project management firm, the project manager must engage in quality programs and provide documents that specifically comply with the quality standards in use. For example, a project is typically required to follow the parent organization’s work processes related to procurement and document management. Any project processes that interface with the organization’s quality processes will be required to meet the quality standards of the organization.

If a large project involves repetitive processes such as welding or pouring concrete, statistical processes control methods can be used to maintain the quality of the product. These processes control methods are similar to those used by process managers in the manufacturing environment. The intent is for the work of the project to meet design specifications. The welding tools and equipment must be sufficient to perform the welds established in the welding specifications, and the welds must be tested, usually by an independent tester, to assure the end product meets the design specifications. The civil engineers design a concrete pour to meet certain criteria that will support a structure. The criteria, detailed in the design specifications, provide the parameters that the construction crew must meet when pouring the concrete. On large projects, which sometimes have thousands of welds and hundreds of yards of concrete to pour, the use of quality control tools and methods are critical to meeting design specifications

Differences

Because projects are temporary, spotting trends in samples produced by repetitive processes is not as important as considering quality in the planning of the project. Instead, the project manager must be able to provide documentation that demonstrates that the correct processes are in place to prevent quality failures.

The cost of quality (COQ) must be considered in the scope document and the project budget. If the group or company that is providing the project management is separate from the client, the project budget will bear the cost of prevention while the client will reap the rewards of avoiding the costs of failure. If senior management does not recognize the benefit to the organization of reducing cost of failure by spending more on prevention during the project, the project manager can be placed in the position of producing a product or service that he or she knows could be of higher quality.

If the cost of quality is not specifically considered and approved by senior management in the scope of the project, quality might be sacrificed during the project to meet budget goals.

Some separation of responsibility for quality is necessary. For example, if a project is undertaken to build a facility that makes something, it is important to distinguish between the quality of the work done by the project team and the quality of the items produced after the project is over. The client provides specifications for the facility that should result in production of quality products. It is the client’s responsibility to provide appropriate project requirements that will result in a facility that can produce quality products. It is the project manager’s responsibility to meet the project requirements. The project manager must focus on meeting requirements for project activities, but as part of the quality team, opportunities to improve the quality of the final product should be discussed with the client. If the final products fail to meet quality standards, someone will be blamed for the failure. It could be the project manager, even if he or she met all the requirements of the project specified by the client.

Because projects are time sensitive, meeting activity finish dates is a common characteristic of quality work on a project that is not typical of a requirement of a process manager.

Measurement Terminology

During the execution phase of the project, services and products are sampled and measured to determine if the quality is within control limits for the requirements and to analyze causes for variations. This evaluation is often done by a separate quality control group, and knowledge of a few process measurement terms is necessary to understand their reports. Several of these terms are similar, and it is valuable to know the distinction between them.

The quality plan specifies the control limits of the product or process; the size of the range between those limits is the toleranceVariation allowed on either side of the mean, often shown with the ± symbol to mean plus or minus.. Tolerances are often written as the mean value, plus or minus the tolerance. The plus and minus signs are written together, ±.

Tools are selected that can measure the samples closely enough to determine if the measurements are within control limits and if they are showing a trend. Each measurement tool has its own tolerances. For example, if a machine is making rods whose diameters should be 10 mm ± 0.01 mm, you need a measuring device that can accommodate a rod that is 10 mm wide but can measure that width to a much smaller tolerance than 0.01 mm, such as 0.001 mm.

The choice of tolerance directly affects the cost of quality (COQ). In general, it costs more to produce and measure products that have small tolerances. The costs associated with making products with small tolerances for variation can be very high and not proportional to the gains. For example, it might double the manufacturing cost to improve a process from a 4 σ to a 5 σ (lower tolerances from 25 percent of control limits to 20 percent), which might only reduce the number of parts that are out of control from 4 per 100,000 to 6 per 10 million (see Figure 10.4 "Meaning of Sigma Levels"). The cost of failure of only 4 parts per 100,000 might be much less than the cost of prevention.

Defining and Meeting Client Expectations

Clients provide specifications for the project that must be met for the project to be successful. Meeting project specifications is one definition of a project success. Clients often have expectations that are more difficult to capture in a written specification. For example, one client will want to be invited to every meeting of the project and will then select the ones that seem most relevant. Another client will want to only be invited to project meetings that need client input. Inviting this client to every meeting will cause unnecessary frustration. Listening to the client and developing an understanding of the expectations that are not easily captured in specifications is important to meeting the client’s expectations.

Project surveys that capture how the client perceives the project performance provide the project team with data that is useful in meeting client expectation. If the results of the surveys indicate that the client is not pleased with some aspect of the project, the project team has the opportunity to explore the reasons for this perception with the client and develop recovery plans. The survey can also help define what is going well and what needs improved.

Sources of Planning Information

Planning for quality is part of the initial planning process. The early scope, budget, and schedule estimates are used to identify processes, services, or products where the expected grade and quality should be specified. Risk analysis is used to determine which of the risks the project faces could affect quality.

Techniques

Several different tools and techniques are available for planning and controlling the quality of a project. The extent to which these tools are used is determined by the project complexity and the quality management program in use by the client.

Planning and Control Results

The quality plan is produced during the initiation phase. The methods, procedures, and logic are described to demonstrate a commitment to a project of high quality. The plan identifies the products or services that will be measured and how they will be measured and compared to benchmarks. A flowchart demonstrates the logic and pathways to improve the plan.

During the execution phase, data are collected by measuring samples according to the design specified in the plan. The data are charted and analyzed. If variations are due to assignable causes, change requests are created.

Process Analysis

The flowcharts of quality processes are compared to the processes followed during actual operations. If the plan was not followed, the process is analyzed and corrective action taken. The corrective action could be to educate the people involved on how to follow the quality plan or to revise the plan.

The experiments that sample products and processes and collect data are examined to see if they are following statistically valid sampling techniques and that the measurement methods have small enough tolerances to detect variation within control limits.

Because projects are temporary, there are fewer opportunities to learn and improve within one project if it has a short duration, but even in short projects, the quality manager should have a way to learn from experience and change the process for the next project of a similar complexity profile.

Quality Audit

For additional confidence and assurance, an outside group can come in and review the quality procedures and accuracy of the data. This process is similar to a financial audit and is called a quality auditReview of the quality plan, procedures, data collection, and analysis by an outside group.. The purpose of a quality audit is to compare the stated quality goals of the project against the actual practice and procedures that are used. It is not a certification of the quality of the products themselves.