PMP PREPARATION : QUALITY

I cleared my PMP on 26th may 2014. I have gone through all the three books PMBOK, RITA MULCAHY'S and HEAD FIRST. During preparation I made few notes. so the material has been picked up from all the three books and these are just the key points. 
 NOTE : IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT ONE SHOULD READ THESE POINTS IN DETAIL FROM THE BOOKS (which ever interests you more) AND ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE FINISHED A THOROUGH READING, YOU CAN GO THROUGH THESE POINTS FOR CONSOLIDATION.

QUALITY

Degree to which the project fulfills the requirements

Company Quality Policy is part of OPA

• WHO SAID WHAT/ WHO GAVE WHICH RULE (Important) :

Joseph Juran : Fitness for use (product does both - what it is supposed to do and does it well)

W Edwards Deming : PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act)

Philip Crossby : Zero defects

                            Do it first time

                            Quality is "Conformance to Requirement" (product does what it is supposed to do)

                            Concept of cost of poor quality

                            Prevention over Inspection

• GOLD PLATING : giving the customer extra

• MARGINAL ANALYSIS : The benefits you are going to get from the improved Quality equals the cost to achieve that Quality. At this point you should stop trying to improve the Quality further. It will be of no use . makes sense :)

• KAIZEN : Continuous Improvement. It's a philosophy that guides management rather then a particular way of doing Quality Assurance. 

• JIT (Just In Time) : No/ Zero inventory, Force attention on Quality. If anything goes wrong there is not any extra inventory to deal with the mistake.

• IMPACTS OF POOR QUALITY : 

1. Increased cost
2. Decreased profit
3. Low morale
4. Low customer satisfaction
5. Increased risk
6. Rework
7. Schedule delay

• QUALITY MAIN BENEFITS : 

1. Less rework
2. Higher productivity
3. Higher efficiency
4. More satisfaction

• PLAN QUALITY : What is quality.  How to ensure it.

• PERFORM QUALITY ASSURANCE : Are we following the processes and procedures as we planned. Preventive measure. Tracking the way you work and improving it all the time.

• CONTROL QUALITY : Examine the actual deliverable and ensure it is correct, Corrective measure. Inspecting product to find defects.

                         You should be absolutely clear about the difference between PERFORM QUALITY ASSURANCE and CONTROL QUALITY . Tools used in the above two processes are the same but in QUALITY ASSURANCE  they are used to check the processes and in CONTROL it checks the product. Just because you see a perform quality control tool does not mean you are in control Quality process, the same are used in Quality assurance too. Figure out what you are using them for 

• COST OF QUALITY : How much will be spent on the Quality.  Absolutely everything you spent to ensure the quality on the project. Cost of all (Prevention + Inspection) activities. e.g. testing, time spent in writing standards, reviewing documents, meeting to analyze the root cause of the defect, rework to fix the defect etc.

                      Cost of Conformance : money spent to avoid the problems .

                      Cost of non-conformance : Money spent because of the problem that occurred .

• SEVEN BASIC QUALITY TOOLS : 

1. Cause and effect diagram (Fishbone or ISHIKAWA) : See all of the possible causes (material, worker, machine).  Pinpoint the cause. Vertical line of fish bone shows category and horizontal line of fishbone shows root cause.
2. Flow chart : How processes work visually. 
3. Check sheet : Used to verify that a set of required steps have been performed. 
4. Pareto diagram : (80-20), 80% of the problems are because of 20% of causes. Large number of problems are caused by a small number of causes and that category is the most important.
5. Histogram : How your data breaks down into categories. 
6. Control chart : Rule of seven. Upper control limit, lower control limit and the mean. Any point outside an upper or lower control limit - that data point is out of control - entire process is out of control. Seven data point on one side of the mean - process out of control.
7. Scatter diagram : Relate two different types of data to each other.

• IDENTIFY: The question is talking about which Quality Tool

Cause and Effect : A creative way to look at the cause of a problem OR Identify the best way to plan OR help stimulates thinking, organize thoughts, generate discussion OR explore the factors

Pareto : Help focus attention on the most critical issue OR Prioritize potential cause of the problem OR Separate the critical few from the uncritical many.

• DOE (Design Of Experiment) : Statistical method Fast and Accurate. Identifies which variable will have the most influence on a quality outcome. 

• SIGMA (Standard Deviation ) : How much variance from the mean is permissible in a process.

• PROCESS ANALYSIS : If you are doing something again and again, check it after few. Like installation of computers

• AUDIT : To check if the customer is following the quality process.  Auditor comes from outside the company.

• FIXING THE BUG : 

In project : Solve the problem that gives trouble

In process : Avoid your project's Problems + other projects can learn from the problems you have faced

• BENCHMARKING : It can give you some reference points for judging your own project. Part of OPA.

FEW IMPORTANT COMPARISONS

QUALITY	GRADE
Degree to which the project fulfills the requirements like ISO9000. What you have asked for that function. You asked for a chicken pizza and you got noodles that is a quality problem Always a problem	Same functional use but different technical characteristic  You asked for a chicken pizza but you got a mushroom pizza that is a grade problem May not be a problem
PRECISION	ACCURACY
Precision is a measure of EXACTNESS  e.g. All bullets at one place even if away from bulls eye that is HIGH PRECISION	Accuracy is an assessment of CORRECTNESS. measured value close to the true value e.g. Bullets more spread out but equidistant from the bulls eye is same degree of ACCURACY
ATTRIBUTE SAMPLING	VARIABLE SAMPLING
Result either conform or does not conform. Yes or no	Result is rated on a continuous scale that measures the degree of conformity
PREVENTION	INSPECTION
Keeping errors out of the process	Keeping errors out of the hands of the customer
TOLERANCE	CONTROL LIMIT
Specified range of acceptable results. Beyond this it will be unacceptable	Boundaries of common variation in a statistically stable process.  e.g. upper control limit, lower control limit
VALIDATED CHANGES	VERIFIED DELIVERABLES
The changed/ repaired item is inspected	The correctness of the deliverable is checked

QUALITY MATRIX	QUALITY CHECKLIST
How the control quality process will measure a project or product attribute e.g. On time performance, cost control, defect frequency, failure rate, test coverage	Component specific Used to verify that a set of required steps have been performed

Note : please feel free to ask any question. If something confuses you or you need more explanation on the same, please let me know. if you find any point wrong please comment. I shall check it and amend