If there is one component of any project that is critical, it is quality. Yes, budget, time, and all of these elements play key roles, but quality tends to override everything, and rightly so. However, quality is one of the most difficult elements to manage. After all, it is hard to manage things we don’t understand, and quality appears to be an esoteric concept for a lot of project managers. With that being said, in this blog post, we are going to take a look at some of the different ways you can manage quality during the project you are managing.
Ensure that quality management is pragmatic
There are a lot of people that do not invest the right amount of effort towards project quality, and this comes down to one thing; they do not understand it. There are a number of different definitions regarding project quality online. However, it essentially comes down to clearly defining the requirements of your stakeholders and users, and then meeting these requirements.
Plan for quality
Quality needs to be intentional. You need to figure out how you are going to manage it. This involves putting together a quality management plan. Your quality management plan should include a glossary of quality management terms, as well as the roles and responsibilities for quality management. It should also address how deliverables will be validated, how defects will be tracked and reported, what will be inspected and tested, the types of software testing environments that are needed, and the tools and techniques that are going to be applied.
Start the project with a commitment to quality
You need to start your project off on the right foot, and this means committing to quality and having a clear focus. If tests and inspections are periodically conducted throughout the lifestyle of your project, this means that defects are more likely to be found at the point of origination. This means that you can rectify them as quickly as possible, rather than wasting a lot of time and money.
Conduct regular testing
Aside from the points that have already been mentioned, you also need to conduct regular testing to ensure that you keep your project on track. Skimping on critical tests can come back to haunt you. You need to safeguard testing time. Moreover, make sure that the amount of time spent on quality is commensurable with the complexity and the size of the project.
So there you have it: some of the key steps you need to follow in order to manage quality on the project you are working on. Use the steps above as a starting point for quality management. If you feel like you are struggling to deliver on quality, it is worth looking into taking a project management training course. The benefits of project training aren’t only for those starting out; it always helps to have a refresher now and again, so this is a good thing to consider if you feel quality has started to slip and you’re not sure why.
