Good morning guys. In project management when we talk about quality management, there is a process called "plan quality management" which identifies quality requirements and its deliverables and documents how the project will demonstrate compliance with it. It plans about how quality will be managed and validated throughout the project. Quality planning is done in parallel with other planning processes like scope, cost, schedule planning.
The output of this process are: Quality management plan, process improvement plan, quality metrics, quality checklists.
So, as we know, we require few tools and techniques for every process in project management, for this process also we need few tools and techniques like:
- Cost benefit analysis
- Cost of quality
- Benchmarking
- Design of experiments
- Statistical sampling
- Meetings
- Seven basic quality tools.
We will learn the seven basic quality tools today. Okay, so to conform to customer requirements (which is nothing but quality), what are the deviations observed? Why did these deviations or variations come? What can be done to reduce or remove these deviations and achieve exact as per customer requirement and scope? To get answers of all these questions, we take help from these quality tools. Though "Gantt chart" is not part of these 7 quality tools, we will also take a look at it in the end.
- Cause and effect diagram (Ishikawa/fishbone diagram): These are also known as fishbone diagram. The problem statement (which is causing deviation from expected quality of product) is used at starting point (at mouth of fish) and we start writing possible or identified root causes at the each bone part of the fish. Sometimes we can get underlying root cause of yet another root cause. So, we write all such root causes until reasonable possibilities have been exhausted and until you get an actionable root cause. So, by taking action on such root cause, we can correct the process so that variation is reduced or eliminated. Example of actionable root causes: Wrong technology used. Action is change the technology. Employees were not properly trained. Action is train the employees properly.
- Flow charts (Process maps): These are also known as process maps because they display sequence of steps and the branching possibilities of a process. It helps in making proper decisions in the process for more than one inputs and outputs. Flow charts show the activities, decision points, branching loops, parallel paths. It helps in mapping operational details that exists within horizontal value chain of SIPOC model (Supplier, input, process, output and customer). Flow charts also help in understanding and estimating the cost of quality in a process.
- Check-sheets (Tally sheets): These are used as a checklist when gathering data. These are used to organize facts in such a way that it can help in identifying potential quality problem.
- Pareto diagram (80/20 rule): The data collected and organized using the check sheets, can be displayed in the form of pareto diagram. These are special bar charts which are used to identify causes of most problems. That means, what are the 20% causes, which are responsible for 80% problems. So, on Y-axis, we have percentage and X-axis we mention the most occurring causes in the order. In above diagram, we are trying to find source of shipment delays. So, payment issues are more frequent than all other reason of delay, rather than delays due to out of stock or traffic etc. So, 80% of shipment delays are caused by payment issues which is 20% of total list of reasons. So, it will further help to decide the team to work on removing this cause behind payment issues so that 80% delays can be avoided. Got it?
- Histogram: It breaks down data into different categories (such as catastrophic, high, critical) and helps to make decision. The histogram reflects the number of defects found after final round of testing. Sometimes, histogram (being a bar chart) can look like a pareto chart but it's not, because histogram doesn't have trend line. Example: Y-axis number of people and X-axis has age group category. So, it gives information about how many people in particular age group category.
- Control charts: These charts are used to determine whether the process is stable or has predictable performance? They reflect minimum and maximum values allowed. So, a process is considered out of control if a data point exceeds control limit or seven consecutive plot points are above or below the mean (line). We can monitor output variables using this chart.
- Scatter diagrams (co-relation charts): They explain change in independent variable Y in relation with another independent variable X and we find co-relation between them. You may wonder, how and why two independent variables can have co-relation and why should we bother to find their co-relation? Listen! In above diagram, we have marked sales versus months. So, there is no dependency of sales on month, hence we call it as independent. But, if we observe that sales are increasing in specific months then it can be useful for us to define market strategy. It thus keeps track of trends and patterns of measurements.
Note: Any chart having time (time, hours, dates, months, years etc) on X-axis is called run chart.
Let us take a quick look at Gantt chart
As shown in above diagram, it plots time on horizontal X-axis and project tasks or activities on Y-axis. There are vertical lines showing milestones of a project. Each task or activity is shown by a bar. So, it looks like horizontal bar chart.
