Plan Quality Management Outputs – Quality Management Plan, Quality Checklists, Process Improvement Plan, Quality Metrics

Before we begin, if you have forgotten, this is where the Plan Quality Management process lies in the PG-KA mapping,

Now just like many other processes in the Planning process group, the major output of this process is also a Plan viz. the Quality Management Plan.

Quality Management Plan

The Quality Management Plan provides the guidelines for managing quality on your project. Just like the other sub-plans of the Project Management Plan, the Quality Management Plan also consists of the strategies. But here the strategies are for monitoring the project quality. Even the reasoning for all the quality related steps being taken are included in the plan so that all stakeholders understand the rationale behind the metrics being used to measure the project’s failure or success.

Some examples of the metric are, Schedule Variance, Cost Variance, Defects Density, Performance Guidelines etc. Although Schedule or Cost variance could be a part of their respective knowledge areas, these are often measured in the Quality Management Plan. Usually a goal is defined for these metrics, for example, a 5% variance or a 0.25% performance degrade etc

Note that Quality Management Plan is the main tool for preventing defects on your project.

Quality Checklists

How about giving a heads up to the team about the common errors that projects typically face? That way, if the team can avoid the common errors, the project will automatically be spared of some of the common defects. Using such type of quality checklist is a good defect prevention technique. Similarly, checklists can also be used for inspecting products for their characteristics

Process Improvement Plan

If you have a good understanding of the Project Management Plan, you would have immediately recognized that the Process Improvement Plan is an element of the Project Management Plan. It describes how the processes being used during the course of the project can be changed for the better. This involves finding inefficiencies and bottlenecks. The best part about the Process Improvement Plan is the fact that the project team is doing more than just building the product of the project. The project team is also thinking about how the company delivers all of its projects and how it can be improved

Quality Metrics

These are the kinds of measurements you’ll take throughout your project to figure out its quality. Here’s where you document how you’ll be figuring out the product’s quality. You may need to write down the formulas you’ll use, when you will do the measurements, why you are taking them and how it can be interpreted. For example, softwares typically have a defect backlog that project teams track using programs like Jira or Bugzilla. It is a good idea to keep track of the defect backlog reduction with every software release

Project Document Updates

This is often an output of planning processes because as you find new information in the course of planning you need to update the existing project documents. For example, a stakeholder register might need to be updated if you find new stakeholders in the course of planning your quality activities.

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