Successful IT Projects slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie Successful IT Projects By Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie

Successful IT Projects slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie

Successful IT ProjectsBy Darren Dalcher

& Lindsey Brodie

www.thomsonlearning.co.uk/fasttrack

Chapter 8


Lecture 8

Project Quality Management


Learning outcomes• Understand the importance of quality

management

• Describe the main processes of project quality management and understand how they relate to projects

• Describe several quality control techniques

• Understand the contribution of the major quality experts to quality management

• Discuss quality standards and models


What is quality?

• Quality of design: – Decide the level of quality required - characteristics of the

product or service such as grade of materials and performance specifications

• Quality of conformance:– The degree to which the design specifications are met or

‘conformance to requirements’

• Fitness for purpose:– Means that the product can be used for the purpose it was

intended. Usually considered more rigorous than ‘fitness for use’


Different views of quality

• Quality as:– A product-based quantity– A user-based view– A specification– A value-based approach– A transcendent property– A continuous property


The cost of quality

• Cost of quality (COQ) includes all the costs associated with quality-related processes

• Cost of quality factors:– Prevention costs (includes quality planning,

technical reviews, test equipment and training)– Appraisal costs (includes inspections and testing)– Failure costs

• Internal failure costs (rework)• External failure costs (helpline support and fixing customer

fault reports)


The cost of quality

COQ = POC + PONC

Cost of quality (COQ)

Price of conformance (POC): price of ensuring “things are done right the first time”. The sum of prevention costs and appraisal costs

Price of non-conformance (PONC): the failure costs

Crosby (1980)


Cost to fix escalates as you move towards field use

13 - 6x

10x

15 - 40x

30 - 70x

40 - 1000x

82xIBMaverage

Requirements Design Coding DevelopmentTesting

AcceptanceTesting

Operation

Rel

ativ

e co

st t

o fix

an

erro

r


Project quality management

• Quality planning: – Identifying the relevant requirements, quality procedures and

standards, and determining how a project will meet them. Must have both product/system metrics and project process metrics

• Quality assurance:– Carrying out the planned quality activities to ensure the project

delivers a quality product/service

• Quality control:– Monitoring the project results to ensure they meet the relevant

quality standards. Outputs include quality control status reports, rework and process improvements


Quality control methods

• Management reviews

• Testing

• Pareto analysis

• Control charts

• Walkthroughs

• Inspections

Already discussedin Lecture 4


An example of a Pareto diagram

0%

80%

60%

40%

20%

100%

Num

ber

of d

efec

ts r

epor

ted

over

a g

iven

tim

e pe

riod

0

40

80

120

160

200 185

142

3020

10

Cum

ulat

ive

Per

cent

age

Insufficient Qualifier Data

Missing Source Information

Missing Benchmark Data

Missing Status Data

Missing Target Level

(Note all percentages are rounded down)


An example of a control chart

TimeMean

32

3

2

Upper Control Limit

Lower Control Limit

Violation of control limits


Control charts• Chance causes: tend to lie within the control limits - only a

one in a thousand chance of not doing so

• Special causes (assignable causes or sporadic causes): controlled at the local or operational level. Eliminating these means the process returns to its controlled state. Identified by looking for patterns that suggest non-random behaviour in the control chart. Corrective actions are needed to remove special causes. For example, can detect when manufacturing equipment is becoming defective

• Common causes (endemic causes or chronic causes): inherent in the process, only if the basic process is altered will they change


Walkthroughs

• A walkthrough is a type of peer group review• Informal and lasts 1 to 1.5 hours• Purpose is no enforce standards, detect errors and

improve visibility of the material and overall system quality

• Product author typically describes the structure and logic of the material being reviewed

• A co-ordinator plans and organises the walkthrough• An action list of problems and questions is generated• Outcome is a decision about whether the material can be

accepted as it is or whether it needs revision and even a further walkthrough


Inspections• Carried out on written documentation• Originally developed by Michael Fagan for use on

source code• Now extended by Tom Gilb for use on earlier

system documents (requirements specifications and even contracts)

• Also extended by Robert Mays (IBM) to support continuous process improvement

• Gilb has moved focus from defect finding and fixing towards sampling to determine quality (better to rewrite than fix if a high number of defects)


Inspection

• Inspection must be economic• Can be used for training about standards• Does not replace testing, but can be

argued to find defects earlier

• Checkers are given roles• Use rules and checklists to find ‘issues’ • Check against source and kin documents• Author has final say if ‘issues’ are ‘defects’


Overview of the inspection process

Kickoff CheckingPlanningSpecification

MeetingEdit

ProcessMeeting

Edit Audit

Statistics

Main Specification,Source Documents,

Kin Documents,Rules

and Checklists

Quality Checked Main Specification,Change Requests for

Source and Kin Documentsand Suggested Process

Improvements

Entry Exit

Strategy


Quality metrics

How can quality be expressed?– Think back to Lecture 2 and the discussion on

success criteria being picked up as project objectives

– Remember Doran’s SMART method– Think back also to Lecture 4 and the discussion

about quality requirements– Earlier in this lecture under quality planning, we

mentioned product/system metrics and project process metrics


Key contributors to the quality movement

• Walter Shewhart

• W. Edwards Deming

• Joseph Juran

• Philip Crosby

• Kaoru Ishikawa


Walter Shewhart

• Encouraged managers to think about problem prevention and process improvement

• Developed:

– The control chart (discussed earlier)

– The Plan/Do/Check/Act cycle for process improvement


The Shewhart Cycle or Deming Cycle

Act Plan

DoStudy*Execute Plans

Plan ActionsDecide Actions Needed

Study Results of Actions Taken

* Shewhart used ‘Check’, while Deming preferred ‘Study’


W. Edwards Deming

• Deming popularised the Shewhart cycle

• Came to fame after working in Japan to help the Japanese improve the quality of their manufactured products

• Promoted the concept:– Quality is a management issue: common

causes often beyond the ability of the worker to fix and so require management action


Joseph Juran

• Juran defined quality from a customer’s viewpoint as ‘fitness for use’ (five attributes: quality of design, quality of conformance, availability, safety and field use)

• Juran’s message was that quality must be planned

• The ‘Juran Trilogy’– Quality planning– Quality improvement– Quality control


Philip Crosby

Cost of Quality (COQ) = Price of Conformance (POC) + Price of Non-conformance (PONC)

4 Absolutes of Quality Management:Quality is defined as conformance to requirementsQuality comes from preventionQuality sets the performance standard at ‘zero defects’Quality is measured by the cost of non-conformance

Insisted that ‘Quality is Free’


Kaoru Ishikawa

• Developed:– Quality circles: teams within one or more

organisations meet regularly to discuss how to improve a work process. They devise and try out corrective actions, and report back. Meetings are held until the team decides to disband

– ‘Cause and effect’ diagrams known as Ishikawa diagrams or fishbone diagrams


An Ishikawa diagram or fishbone diagram

Software not delivered on-time

Inexperiencedproject team

New technology

Too many bugs

Too much work Other?

Lack of inspections

Too many last minute changes

Insufficient priorproject experience

Poor training

Too much rework

Unrealistic deadlines

Poor documentation

Lack of knowledge of Evaluation Criteria

New hardwarearrived late

Work rushed

Requirementsspecificationtoo imprecise


Continuous improvement

• Continuously striving to produce better products and improve processes

• Key requirement is that an organisation has stable processes so that the impact of any change can be understood. (Often misinterpreted as that an organisation has to have processes!)


Six Sigma• Holistic approach to quality. An organisation sets

high six sigma goals and uses continuous process improvement

• Six sigma goal is no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities (think back to control charts)

• Adopted by Motorola and General Electric Company (GEC)

• Builds on the work of the quality gurus such as Deming, Juran and Crosby

• Originally a five step DMAIC improvement process. It has now become eight step


Six Sigma improvement process

• Identify the project• Define the project• Measure current process performance• Analyse/probe the problem• Develop the improved process• Implement the changes• Control - measure and hold the gains• Communicate - exploit the achievement in other

areas


Industry quality standardsISO 9000:2000 Standards for quality management

with respect to improved customer satisfaction and continuous improvement. Focuses on eight principles:– Customer focus– Leadership– Involvement of people– Process approach– System approach to management– Continual improvement– Factual approach to decision making– Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

See http://www.iso.org


Industry quality standardsTickIT• TickIT provides a framework for organisations to

get certification under the ISO 9001:2000 framework

• Develops quality management system certification procedures:– Publishes guidance material for interpreting the

requirements of ISO 9001– Advises on training, selecting and registering auditors

with IT experience and competence– Introduces rules for the accreditation of certification

bodies in the software sector(see http://www.tickit.org)


Maturity models

• Provide frameworks for organisations to assess their overall capability

• Aim to help organisations understand what they need to do to achieve process improvement or enhance organisational capability


Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)

• Developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon university. See http://www.sei.cmu.edu

• Originally CMM but integrated other models to become CMMI

• Two instantiations:– Staged CMMI: assesses a whole organisation’s

process capability at one of five maturity levels– Continuous CMMI: assesses different process areas

across an organisation individually, so a set of maturity levels results


The CMMI staged diagram:the maturity levels

Level 1Initial

Level 2Managed

Level 4Quantitatively

Managed

Level 5Optimising

Level 3Defined


CMMI • Maturity Level 1: Initial: processes are ad hoc and

chaotic• Maturity Level 2: Managed: processes are planned,

performed, measured and controlled• Maturity Level 3: Defined: Processes are qualitatively

predictable• Maturity Level 4: Quantitatively Managed: Processes

are understood in statistical terms and special causes are addressed. Processes are quantitatively predictable

• Maturity Level 5: Optimising: Focus on improving process performance by removing common causes


Project management maturity models

• Aim to improve and standardise project management processes

• The Project Management Institute (PMI) produced an Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3). – This builds on the project management processes

described in Lecture 1 (initiating processes, planning processes, executing processes, monitoring and controlling processes, and closing processes)

– Extends into programme and portfolio management (think back to Lecture 2)


Summary

• Discussed:– Current ideas on project quality management– Key people who have shaped quality management

• Seen that Quality:– Must be designed into a product– Not just about errors and their elimination: it is also

about prevention– Is a dynamic concept– Is concerned with the usefulness and acceptability of

a product to its users and the project clients