Quality Assurance in Project Management

 
Quality is an important factor in determining the effectiveness of a project. Ensuring the quality of the project throughout its creation allows you to achieve the ultimate goal of the organization with minimal costs and maximum efficiency.

A project is a temporary venture designed to create unique products or services.

Temporality means that any project has a beginning and a conclusion when the goals are achieved, or it is determined that these goals cannot be achieved. Uniqueness implies that the products or services created have significant differences from other similar products or services.

Project management is the application of knowledge, experience, methods and tools to the work of a project to meet the requirements placed on it and the expectations of its participants. Meeting these requirements and expectations involves finding the optimal combination of goals, deadlines, costs, quality indicators and other characteristics of the project.

Therefore, the quality of the project should be ensured at all stages of its creation and, consequently, quality is an important element of project structure management.

According to the ISO 9000 series, quality is generally understood as a set of characteristics of an object related to its ability to meet established or intended needs.

Thus, project quality management should be a system of methods, tools and activities aimed at fulfilling the requirements of the participants.

It should begin with the planning process, which will define the quality management plan used primarily in the quality assurance and coordination processes.

Project quality management should be focused on both project management and project product. Although project quality management applies to all projects, regardless of the project product, the specific measures and methods of ensuring the quality of the product depend on the specific type of product obtained within the framework of the project (see Table 1).

 Table 1 Resource requirements by component

Quality criteria of the project management process

 

Stages of creating a project	Quality criteria
Quality control of the project management process in the Project Initiation phase	Quality of documentation of stages: ·        a Memorandum for the opening of the project, the Charter, the Contractual Documents and the Order for the opening of the project must be created. The Project Card, the Project Opening Memorandum and the Charter shall contain all the information required in the Project Management Regulations; ·        all necessary documents have been approved; ·        documents are stored in accordance with the communications management regulations; ·        the deadlines for approval of the Charter and the Memorandum for the opening of the project were observed. Quality of project management: ·        a Project Manager has been appointed; ·        a project must be created in the project management information system and all the parameters required in the project management regulations must be entered; ·        executors reported on the time spent on the Initiation stage in the project management system; ·        all works on the Initiation phase are closed
Quality control of the project management process in the Planning phase	Quality of documentation of stages: ·        a Project Plan has been created in accordance with the requirements of the regulations; ·        the Project Budget has been created in accordance with the requirements of the regulations; ·        The Final Description of the Project Content has been created. ·        information requested from external project participants is provided in a timely manner; ·        the terms of work of the Planning stage did not go beyond the permissible deviations (including the approval of documents by the Customer). Quality of project management: ·        A Basic Project Plan has been created. ·        the risks of the project are taken into account; ·        work on supply, payment, conclusion of contracts is taken into account; ·        resource conflicts have been resolved; ·        the project manager reported on the time spent on the Planning stage in the project management system; ·        actual data (deadlines and labor costs for the work of the Planning phase) have been entered into the Project Plan
Quality control of the project management process in the Execution and Management phase	Quality of documentation of stages: ·        all the necessary documentation specified in the Project Communications Management Plan was created for the project; ·        all necessary project reporting was provided in a timely manner; ·        For all changes, project change requests must be created and signed; ·        All project change requests are recorded in the Change Log. ·        new Project Baselines agreed upon (as required); ·        reporting was provided (by the Executors - daily, by other participants - according to the agreed deadlines); ·        timely response of the Project Manager to critical situations and reporting to the project portfolio manager. Quality of project management: ·        each participant of the project received the necessary information in a timely manner; ·        timely updating of the actual information on the project; ·        timely changes to the project were made; ·        A new Project Baseline has been created (as needed) ·        the project manager must report on the time spent on the Execution and Control phase in the project management system
Quality control of the project management process in the Completion phase	Quality of documentation of stages: ·        the customer is provided with the Final Report; ·        the Act of Acceptance of Works is closed; ·        the Order on the closure of the project was approved; ·        the final report is provided within the agreed time frame; ·        the act of acceptance of the development is closed within the agreed time; ·        all project documents are archived. Quality of project management: ·        all works have been completed; ·        payment from the customer received

The main processes for ensuring the quality of project management are:

1. Quality planning, which should result in the definition of quality requirements and standards for the project and product, as well as documenting how the project will demonstrate its compliance with the established requirements and standards.
2. Quality assurance, which involves verifying compliance with quality requirements and measurement results during the control process to ensure the application of relevant standards and specified requirements.
3. Quality control is the process of monitoring and recording the results of quality assurance activities to assess performance and make recommendations for necessary changes.
4.  

Quality control should be carried out throughout the project. Quality standards should define project processes and product objectives. And the results of the project should include both the results of work and management results, such as indicators of the fulfillment of cost and deadlines.

Thus, it can be concluded that the quality assurance process in project management allows you to achieve the ultimate goal of the organization with minimal costs and maximum efficiency, provided that a properly developed system of methods, tools and activities aimed at fulfilling the requirements of participants at all stages of project creation.

At the same time, project quality management should be focused on both project management and the project product. For a specific activity, within the framework of the project, specific measures and methods should be developed to ensure the quality of the product, which is carried out through a quality management system. The main processes of quality assurance of project management are: quality planning, quality assurance and quality control.