This course is Project Management Institute aligned.

Course 720:   Quality Assurance

Course Objectives:
  • Implement quality projects with a customer-driven focus
  • Define measurable quality objectives and a plan to deliver promised value
  • Establish a quality-focused culture among project team members
  • Assess, optimize and implement quality processes, tools and metrics
  • Apply proven and innovative industry quality standards
  • Improve project performance through evaluation and quality audits

Course Workshop
This course provides the tools and techniques managers need to deliver quality projects consistently. You learn to focus your team's objectives on customer satisfaction and implement a quality framework to produce successful projects.

Course Benefits
Processes, procedures and plans focused on quality are important, but they alone do not guarantee project success. Customer satisfaction must also be ensured. Quality can only be instilled and sustained by project managers adept at improving processes and enhancing a customer-driven focus.

 

This course is PMI-aligned and qualifies for 17 PDUs

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
Concepts and definitions
  • Personal vs. formal quality concepts
  • Industry-standard definitions
IT and non-IT quality approaches
  • Application development
  • Infrastructure
  • Systems integration
  • Systems upgrade
  • Business re-engineering
  • Regulatory
  • Product development
  • Security
An organizational quality policy
  • Identifying organizational influences
  • Accounting for external industry factors
BUILDING A PROJECT QUALITY ENVIRONMENT
Creating a quality culture
  • Obtaining management buy-in
  • Ensuring team & third-party commitment
Focusing on customer satisfaction
  • Identifying your customers
  • Capturing customer requirements
  • Managing expectations, needs and wants
  • Prioritizing key quality metrics
Leveraging quality standards to your advantage
  • ISO
  • SEI CMMI
  • ITIL
  • Quality awards
Planning for project quality
  • Drafting a project quality approach
  • Selecting a product life cycle model
  • Establishing a project quality policy
MANAGING PROJECT-SPECIFIC QUALITY
Enhancing project management with modern quality methods
  • Preventing vs. inspecting for defects
  • Assigning ownership and responsibility
  • Structuring processes within phases
Maximizing the benefits of proprietary and non-proprietary approaches
  • Deming, Juran, Taguchi, Crosby & others
  • Total Quality Management (TQM)
  • Continuous improvement
Applying practical tools and techniques
  • Analyzing costs and benefits
  • Benchmarking to identify improvements
  • Flowcharting systems and processes
  • Testing potential solutions systematically
Calculating the cost of quality
  • Prevention
  • Appraisal
  • Lab tests
  • Surveys
  • Defect evaluation
  • Downtime
  • Warranty costs
  • Corrective actions
ENSURING PRODUCT-SPECIFIC QUALITY
Balancing quality & project constraints
  • Avoiding cost and schedule sacrifices
  • Determining quality tolerance levels
  • Distinguishing between quality & grade
Applying industry-standard techniques
  • Incorporating the Six Sigma approach
  • Deploying Just In Time (JIT) processes
INCORPORATING QUALITY FUNCTION DEPLOYMENT (QFD)
Translating needs to specifications
  • Spoken and unspoken customer needs
  • Focusing on customer satisfaction
Enhancing project formulation
  • Validating the work breakdown structure (WBS)
  • Solidifying the project definition
IMPLEMENTING QUALITY ASSURANCE
Evaluating and auditing quality
  • Measuring progress against the plan
  • Conducting quality audits
Tracking and forecasting performance
  • Anticipating potential deviations
  • Developing mitigation strategies
APPLYING QUALITY CONTROL
Devising quality control strategies
  • Deciding to accept or eliminate defects
  • Conducting prevention and inspection measures
  • Distinguishing between chronic and sporadic problems
Tools and techniques
  • Attribute sampling
  • Tolerance levels
  • Statistical methods
  • Change control
  • Pareto diagram
  • Ishikawa diagram
Correcting quality defects
  • Optimizing procedures and processes
  • Resolving outstanding issues
  • Avoiding recurrence
CLOSING THE PROJECT
  • Performing root-cause analysis
  • Facilitating a post-implementation review (PIR)
  • Conducting client satisfaction surveys
  • Compiling and sharing lessons learned