Successful IT
Projects
By Darren Dalcher
& Lindsey Brodie
Chapter 8
www.thomsonlearning.co.uk/fasttrack
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Lecture 8
Project Quality Management
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Learning outcomes
• Understand the importance of quality
management
• Describe the main processes of project
quality management and understand how
they relate to projects
• Describe several quality control techniques
• Understand the contribution of the major
quality experts to quality management
• Discuss quality standards and models
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
What is quality?
• Quality of design:
– Decide the level of quality required - characteristics of the
product or service such as grade of materials and performance
specifications
• Quality of conformance:
– The degree to which the design specifications are met or
‘conformance to requirements’
• Fitness for purpose:
– Means that the product can be used for the purpose it was
intended. Usually considered more rigorous than ‘fitness for use’
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Different views of quality
• Quality as:
– A product-based quantity
– A user-based view
– A specification
– A value-based approach
– A transcendent property
– A continuous property
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
The cost of quality
• Cost of quality (COQ) includes all the costs
associated with quality-related processes
• Cost of quality factors:
– Prevention costs (includes quality planning,
technical reviews, test equipment and training)
– Appraisal costs (includes inspections and testing)
– Failure costs
• Internal failure costs (rework)
• External failure costs (helpline support and fixing customer
fault reports)
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
The cost of quality
Crosby (1980)
COQ = POC + PONC
Cost of quality (COQ)
Price of conformance (POC): price of ensuring
“things are done right the first time”. The sum of
prevention costs and appraisal costs
Price of non-conformance (PONC): the failure
costs
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Relative cost to fix an error
Cost to fix escalates as you move
towards field use
40 - 1000x
30 - 70x
82x
IBM
average
15 - 40x
1
Requirements
3 - 6x
Design
10x
Coding Development Acceptance Operation
Testing
Testing
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Project quality management
• Quality planning:
– Identifying the relevant requirements, quality procedures and
standards, and determining how a project will meet them. Must
have both product/system metrics and project process metrics
• Quality assurance:
– Carrying out the planned quality activities to ensure the project
delivers a quality product/service
• Quality control:
– Monitoring the project results to ensure they meet the relevant
quality standards. Outputs include quality control status reports,
rework and process improvements
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Quality control methods
•
•
•
•
•
•
Management reviews
Testing
Pareto analysis
Control charts
Walkthroughs
Inspections
Already discussed
in Lecture 4
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
(Note all percentages are rounded down)
200
100%
185
160
80%
142
120
60%
80
40%
40
20%
30
20
10
0
0%
Insufficient
Qualifier Data
Missing
Source
Information
Missing
Benchmark
Data
Missing Status Missing Target
Data
Level
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Cumulative Percentage
Number of defects reported over a given time period
An example of a Pareto diagram
An example of a control chart
Upper Control Limit
3

2
Violation of control limits

Mean
Time

2

3
 Control Limit
Lower
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Control charts
• Chance causes: tend to lie within the control limits only a one in a thousand chance of not doing so
• Special causes (assignable causes or sporadic
causes): controlled at the local or operational level.
Eliminating these means the process returns to its
controlled state. Identified by looking for patterns that
suggest non-random behaviour in the control chart.
Corrective actions are needed to remove special causes.
For example, can detect when manufacturing equipment
is becoming defective
• Common causes (endemic causes or chronic
causes): inherent in the process, only if the basic process is
altered will they change
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Walkthroughs
• A walkthrough is a type of peer group review
• Informal and lasts 1 to 1.5 hours
• Purpose is no enforce standards, detect errors and
improve visibility of the material and overall system
quality
• Product author typically describes the structure and logic
of the material being reviewed
• A co-ordinator plans and organises the walkthrough
• An action list of problems and questions is generated
• Outcome is a decision about whether the material can be
accepted as it is or whether it needs revision and even a
further walkthrough
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Inspections
• Carried out on written documentation
• Originally developed by Michael Fagan for use
on source code
• Now extended by Tom Gilb for use on earlier
system documents (requirements specifications
and even contracts)
• Also extended by Robert Mays (IBM) to support
continuous process improvement
• Gilb has moved focus from defect finding and
fixing towards sampling to determine quality
(better to rewrite than fix if a high number of
defects)
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Inspection
• Inspection must be economic
• Can be used for training about standards
• Does not replace testing, but can be
argued to find defects earlier
•
•
•
•
Checkers are given roles
Use rules and checklists to find ‘issues’
Check against source and kin documents
Author has final say if ‘issues’ are ‘defects’
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Overview of the
inspection process
Main Specification,
Source Documents,
Kin Documents,
Rules
and Checklists
Process
Meeting
Entry
Planning
Kickoff
Checking
Specification
Meeting
Strategy
Quality Checked
Main Specification,
Change Requests for
Source and Kin Documents
and Suggested Process
Improvements
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Edit
Edit
Audit
Statistics
Exit
Quality metrics
How can quality be expressed?
– Think back to Lecture 2 and the discussion on
success criteria being picked up as project
objectives
– Remember Doran’s SMART method
– Think back also to Lecture 4 and the discussion
about quality requirements
– Earlier in this lecture under quality planning, we
mentioned product/system metrics and project
process metrics
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Key contributors to the
quality movement
•
•
•
•
•
Walter Shewhart
W. Edwards Deming
Joseph Juran
Philip Crosby
Kaoru Ishikawa
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Walter Shewhart
• Encouraged managers to think about problem
prevention and process improvement
• Developed:
– The control chart (discussed earlier)
– The Plan/Do/Check/Act cycle for process
improvement
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
The Shewhart Cycle or Deming Cycle
Decide Actions
Needed
Plan Actions
Act
Study*
Plan
Do
Study Results
of Actions Taken
Execute Plans
* Shewhart used ‘Check’, while Deming preferred ‘Study’
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
W. Edwards Deming
• Deming popularised the Shewhart cycle
• Came to fame after working in Japan to
help the Japanese improve the quality of
their manufactured products
• Promoted the concept:
– Quality is a management issue: common
causes often beyond the ability of the worker
to fix and so require management action
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Joseph Juran
• Juran defined quality from a customer’s
viewpoint as ‘fitness for use’ (five attributes: quality of
design, quality of conformance, availability, safety and field use)
• Juran’s message was that quality must be
planned
• The ‘Juran Trilogy’
– Quality planning
– Quality improvement
– Quality control
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Philip Crosby
Cost of Quality (COQ) =
Price of Conformance (POC)
+ Price of Non-conformance (PONC)
4 Absolutes of Quality Management:
Quality is defined as conformance to requirements
Quality comes from prevention
Quality sets the performance standard at ‘zero defects’
Quality is measured by the cost of non-conformance
Insisted that ‘Quality is Free’
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Kaoru Ishikawa
• Developed:
– Quality circles: teams within one or more
organisations meet regularly to discuss how
to improve a work process. They devise and
try out corrective actions, and report back.
Meetings are held until the team decides to
disband
– ‘Cause and effect’ diagrams known as
Ishikawa diagrams or fishbone diagrams
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
An Ishikawa diagram or fishbone diagram
Inexperienced
project team
Too many bugs
Lack of inspections
Insufficient prior
project experience
Poor training
Work rushed
New hardware
arrived late
Too much rework
Too many
last minute changes
Requirements
specification
too imprecise
Poor documentation
Lack of knowledge
of Evaluation Criteria
New technology
Unrealistic
deadlines
Too much work
Other?
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Software not
delivered on-time
Continuous improvement
• Continuously striving to produce better
products and improve processes
• Key requirement is that an organisation
has stable processes so that the impact of
any change can be understood. (Often
misinterpreted as that an organisation has to have
processes!)
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Six Sigma
• Holistic approach to quality. An organisation sets
high six sigma goals and uses continuous
process improvement
• Six sigma goal is no more than 3.4 defects per
million opportunities (think back to control charts)
• Adopted by Motorola and General Electric
Company (GEC)
• Builds on the work of the quality gurus such as
Deming, Juran and Crosby
• Originally a five step DMAIC improvement
process. It has now become eight step
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Six Sigma improvement process
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Identify the project
Define the project
Measure current process performance
Analyse/probe the problem
Develop the improved process
Implement the changes
Control - measure and hold the gains
Communicate - exploit the achievement in other
areas
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Industry quality standards
ISO 9000:2000 Standards for quality management
with respect to improved customer satisfaction
and continuous improvement. Focuses on eight
principles:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Customer focus
See http://www.iso.org
Leadership
Involvement of people
Process approach
System approach to management
Continual improvement
Factual approach to decision making
Mutually beneficial supplier relationships
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Industry quality standards
TickIT
• TickIT provides a framework for organisations to
get certification under the ISO 9001:2000
framework
• Develops quality management system
certification procedures:
– Publishes guidance material for interpreting the
requirements of ISO 9001
– Advises on training, selecting and registering auditors
with IT experience and competence
– Introduces rules for the accreditation of certification
bodies in the software sector
(see http://www.tickit.org)
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Maturity models
• Provide frameworks for organisations to
assess their overall capability
• Aim to help organisations understand what
they need to do to achieve process
improvement or enhance organisational
capability
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
• Developed by the Software Engineering Institute
(SEI) at Carnegie Mellon university. See
http://www.sei.cmu.edu
• Originally CMM but integrated other models to
become CMMI
• Two instantiations:
– Staged CMMI: assesses a whole organisation’s
process capability at one of five maturity levels
– Continuous CMMI: assesses different process areas
across an organisation individually, so a set of
maturity levels results
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
The CMMI staged diagram:
the maturity levels
Level 5
Optimising
Level 4
Quantitatively
Managed
Level 3
Defined
Level 2
Managed
Level 1
Initial
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
CMMI
• Maturity Level 1: Initial: processes are ad hoc
and chaotic
• Maturity Level 2: Managed: processes are
planned, performed, measured and controlled
• Maturity Level 3: Defined: Processes are
qualitatively predictable
• Maturity Level 4: Quantitatively Managed:
Processes are understood in statistical terms
and special causes are addressed. Processes
are quantitatively predictable
• Maturity Level 5: Optimising: Focus on improving
process performance by removing common
causes
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Project management maturity models
• Aim to improve and standardise project
management processes
• The Project Management Institute (PMI)
produced an Organizational Project
Management Maturity Model (OPM3).
– This builds on the project management processes
described in Lecture 1 (initiating processes, planning
processes, executing processes, monitoring and
controlling processes, and closing processes)
– Extends into programme and portfolio management
(think back to Lecture 2)
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie
Summary
• Discussed:
– Current ideas on project quality management
– Key people who have shaped quality management
• Seen that Quality:
– Must be designed into a product
– Not just about errors and their elimination: it is also
about prevention
– Is a dynamic concept
– Is concerned with the usefulness and acceptability of
a product to its users and the project clients
Successful IT Projects
slides © 2007 Darren Dalcher & Lindsey Brodie