Project Quality Management

Project Quality Management

Quality management is the system or process which ensures that all the actions/activities necessary to carry out the project or manufacture a product which includes plan, design and implement are according to the purpose of the objective, its performance and requirements of customers/users.

Project quality management is not a separate or independent system which happens at the end of a process or completion of an activity. Quality management is a continuous process which starts and ends with the project. It is more about avoiding and preventing than measuring and fixing the defects in quality. Regardless of how much longer the quality management system runs, the ultimate judgement is with meeting the requirements of end users/customers.

Main principle of project quality management is to ensure the project will meet or exceeds the stakeholders’ expectations. Project team must develop a strong relationship with the stakeholders which includes both the beneficiaries and donors of the project.  Project must focus on meeting the requirements of stakeholders, not just completing the written outputs of project.

Quality must be viewed on an equal level with scope, schedule and budget because if the stakeholders are not satisfied with the quality of the services provided then to meet the desired quality, project team has to change the scope, time and budget constraints.

“Quality” is a relative term in project management team. To donor, quality may be some standards that are pre-defined which may not align with the interests of other stakeholders. For beneficiaries or end users of project, definition of quality will be different. In terms of a product, customers would want a product to be user friendly, cost effective etc. Similarly, for a project executing team, quality may be defined as set of standards to be followed during the manufacturing or implementation phase of product or project.

For example, while providing the infrastructure for urban services like water supply, solid waste management services for a metropolitan city, definition of quality is different. For donor agency like some Multilateral Development Bank, infrastructure should be sufficient enough in quality to recover the loan that has been used for infrastructure. For residents, quality will be provision of safe drinking water, clean city and healthy environment. Similarly for stakeholders like companies that provide these services, quality infrastructure would mean which can provide good business model and easy to operate and maintain. Part of defining quality is developing a quality plan and quality checklist during the execution phase.