Managing Quality

Quality is generally defined as the totality of features and inherent or assigned characteristics of a product, person, process, service and/or system that bear on its ability to show that it meets expectations or satisfies stated needs, requirements or specification.

Two key activities are performed concerning quality management for a project: quality planning and quality control.

Quality planning

Quality planning is about defining the products required of the project, with their respective quality criteria, quality methods (including effort required for quality control and product acceptance) and the quality responsibilities of those involved. This generally leads to the definition of a quality management strategy (which specifies the quality management system and key quality management responsibilities) and of product descriptions (including quality expectations, acceptance criteria, tolerances, methods and specific responsibilities).

The quality strategy is typically a document which cab be stored in project Documents section or as a project output itself (therefore as a delivery in Deliveries section).

Products are managed in the Deliveries section of a project and their description can be enriched with the needed quality attributes.

Quality control

Quality control is achieved by implementing, monitoring and recording the quality methods and responsibilities defined in the Quality Management Strategy and Product Descriptions (and subsequently agreed to in Work Packages).

Therefore the key activities in this domain is related to carrying out the quality methods, recording the results and gaining acceptance of quality results.

This can be done with two approaches. The easiest consists of using project activities (managed in project Activities section) to plan and track the results of quality methods (e.g. the execution of a test). Specific quality related information can be added to project activities in Activities section. A more advanced and flexible approach consists of configuring and using workflows in order to support the execution of quality methods. For example a specific workflow could be designed to execute a product quality inspection. The workflow records (and associated reporting) can be used to implement the quality register concept. However, the use of workflows requires the activation of the SM - Service Desk and Service Management module.