The quality management plan acts as a guide for the project manager and his team, it helps the QA department to execute quality management and quality assurance.
The project is measured against the Quality management plan. A contractor usually creates a Quality management plan and is reviewed by the customer. If the final product fails to measure up to the pre-defined quality, then the project needs to start again from the point of issue.
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Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives. —William A. Foster
Project Quality Management Plan (QMP) is a crucial document that outlines the approach, processes, and procedures to ensure the delivery of high-quality outcomes in a project. This comprehensive template acts as a roadmap for project managers and teams to identify, execute, and monitor quality-related activities throughout the project’s lifecycle.
How to Develop a Quality Management Plan?
Who should develop a quality management plan?
Depending on the type of the project, the people who can make the plan would be as follows:
- The project manager
- Team members
- Stakeholders that are from the legal or quality assurance department
- Customer representative group, if the product or service is being developed for a customer
Things Included in a Quality Management Plan
Every project has a unique plan and fits itself, only including the elements and processes that are totally necessary.
The things that need to be included and the activities that should be focused on while developing a quality management plan are (it is not limited to these only, they may change according to the requirements of the project):
- The approach of the company toward quality management
- The end products and deliverables, and the processes that need to be reviewed
- How the requirements will be explained for processes and deliverables
- Roles and responsibilities
- When and how will the management be done, when will it be made sure that process and standards are being applied,
- When and how will the quality assurance be done, when will the deliverables be evaluated?
- Definitions
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Quality Management Plan PMBOK
PMBOK is a body of knowledge for project management. It has all the trade secrets to create the highest quality deliverables at the end of a project. According to PMBOK, there are two standards:
- Quality: the degree against which the characteristics are measured
- Grade: the specifications of the product that is being produced
There are three processes for quality management planning as per this body of knowledge:
- Plan Quality: planning of what standards can be used to get desired quality and producing a quality plan is done at this phase.
- Manage Quality: the application of mentioned standards as per the quality management plan, on the project processes, to achieve desired quality.
- Control Quality: the quality of deliverables is checked in this process.
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let’s Look into These Processes in Detail:
Plan Quality
This process focuses on determining the quality standards that we want to implement in our project and how will the project comply with those standards. Different kinds of projects use different standards.
E.g., if you are making a toy, you will be given a standard design and a certain set of features. But there are certain unstated quality standards that are universal and they are applicable to all projects.
The project manager can buy those from organizations like IEEE, ANSI, ASTM, etc. These are universal quality standards that are used in different kinds of projects.
This process mainly produces a Quality management plan at the end, that defines what standards are to be used and how can the project comply with them, along with details about quality assurance and quality control processes.
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The following are the inputs, outputs and tools, and techniques of this process:
Manage Quality
This process is to audit the requirements and results from quality assurance to see if the correct quality standards and operational definitions are being applied. is going smoothly as per the quality management plan.
This quality audit tests if everything is going to plan and the system is functioning smoothly. This process should always be iterative, after every quality assurance result, this step should be revisited to see if everything is on point.
The inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs of this process are:
Control Quality
This is a measure of defects in the product, this process monitors and records results that are achieved by carrying out quality activities to assess the current quality and recommend changes if necessary to achieve the standard quality.
The inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs of this process are:
Quality Management Plan Components
The actual quality requirements might not be known when the initial Quality management plan is created, but certain techniques and processes should be documented that will unearth the requirements and make sure that they are met.
Some components that should be a part of every Quality management plan are as follows:
- Roles and responsibilities: the overall responsibility of Quality management is usually on the project manager, but he can also devise a quality management/quality assurance team, quality auditors, or any third-party testing team. Each module is tested for required quality, if it meets the requirements the project proceeds, if not that module would need to be redone.
- Completeness and correctness criteria: to clearly define the completeness and correctness of a deliverable, to the customer, a certain criterion is set, when this criterion is met, we expect a happy customer. There shouldn’t be any surprises when it comes to quality control
- Quality requirement process: this is generally a part of the requirement gathering process, but you can use it while creating a quality management plan. Here all the requirements and processes are defined so the quality requirements are unearthed, and customers’ expectations are validated,
- Quality assurance activities: these activities focus on the processes used to create a solution, these can be validated by the functional manager, business sponsor, or a third-party reviewer, Major Quality assurance activities and techniques are defined here.
- Quality standards: All the quality assurance standards previously defined by the company are stated here.
- Quality tools: All the tools that will be used to define and assure the quality of the deliverables are mentioned here.
Quality Management Plan Example in Construction
In a construction project, the quality management plan will start from its design phase. The design of the company should be according to standards, it shouldn’t have any defects, then the material of construction should be according to the quality requirements.
Everything should be as per standards. After the final building is made, every pipe, and every, wire should be exactly according to the required standards, otherwise, the defective part of the building would need reconstruction.
If the company has a plan and if the plan is being followed to a T then no issues will arise after the complete construction.
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But if the construction company’s approach towards quality management is not very good then the company will have to redo a lot of things, maybe the customer won’t even accept the final product if the quality standards are not met.
QMP typically starts by defining the project’s quality objectives and identifying the key stakeholders responsible for quality assurance and control.
It then lays out the methodologies and tools to be employed for quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control.
The document may also include a description of the project’s specific quality standards and any relevant industry or regulatory requirements that must be met.
