Course Learning Outcomes for Unit IV

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Evaluate methods for risk management.

1.1           Derive a risk assessment using quantitative and qualitative methods.

1. Develop a quality management plan to ensure project quality.

4.1           Create a comprehensive quality management report.

1. Prepare a final project report.

5.1           Explain basic concepts of projects and project success as it relates to project risk, quality, and scheduling.

Required Unit Resources

Chapter 9: Project Scheduling: Networks, Duration Estimation, and Critical Path, pp. 313–339

Unit Lesson

Quality Management

The quality management plan is used to explain the approach that the project manager (PM) will use to continuously manage quality throughout the project. A part of planning a project means the PM has to plan to prevent issues, such as wasting resources, time, and cost, which can lead to project failure. Also, do not forget that quality does not have to specifically mean the end product. Quality is also about the process. The PM’s approach to quality must be defined and communicated to all project stakeholders.

In any project, the PM should allow for quality planning, quality control, and quality assurance.

Quality Planning

Quality planning is simply a manner of determining what quality means for your project and how it will be measured. We have already mentioned how important requirements gathering is and how that is linked via customer satisfaction to project success. How do we know the customer is happy unless we ask the customer? We have to have some sort of measure of satisfaction, right? The same goes for the project processes. How do we know if we have a quality project? How will it be measured? How will we meet

expectations for everyone? This is where our quality management plan comes in. The PM needs to include project quality standards and expectations both internally and for the customer, the metrics and measures for success, and critical success factors. How will quality be monitored throughout the project? Who will

be responsible?

Quality Control

Quality control involves the responsible quality person monitoring the outputs from the project to ensure they meet the standards and measurements set in the planning phase. What are the project deliverables? Do you have a list of gathered requirements, a project scope, a statement of work (SOW), or a communications plan? Who will review and ensure that all of these documents are meeting our organization’s quality standards?

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance involves evaluating performance regularly to make sure that the project will meet the customer’s quality needs. If it is determined that measures are not met satisfactorily, then corrective action must be taken. For example, if we are creating a new product based on a customer’s needs, who will ensure the product will meet the customer’s expectations?

Now, remember that all of this is completely based on the needs of the project. Quality may be a big factor in one project and not as much in another, but it depends on the needs of the project. Also, depending on the organization and project, a quality management plan may be a checklist or a table or a sectional report.

To summarize, remember that in quality planning, the PM has to define what quality is, how it will be measured, and who will be responsible. In quality control, the PM will identify the actions that will be taken to continuously monitor and control quality throughout the project life cycle. In quality assurance, the PM has to identify the actions to show that the success measurements have been met, and if not, what the needed improvements are.

Project Scheduling

One of the most important components of the project is its resources. Of course, we now know that resources just refer to the people working on the project. But when there is a complex project, the PM will have a lot of people to schedule. In some cases, two resources can work on their part of the project at one time. In other cases, resource #2 cannot start his or her work until resource #1 finishes their work. For example, in an IT project, the software developer cannot write the software until someone gathers the requirements from the users. And, the tester cannot test the software until the software developer writes it, right?

You have already created a list of tasks for your project. You also have already assigned those tasks to people. The next step is to create an activity network diagram, which is a “schematic display of the project’s sequential activities and the logical relationships between them” (Pinto, 2019, p. 316). This involves

identifying if tasks can occur simultaneously or if they need to occur sequentially. For example, if you are building a house, can you put up the walls before you have poured the concrete foundation? No. However, can the windows be installed at the same time you are installing a sink in the bathroom? Sure!

As a reminder, below are some of the tasks that we used in Unit III for our example project.

1. Start project.
2. Interview supervisors.
3. Interview employees.
4. Gather technical information (personal computer [PC] year, software versions).
5. Acquire technical and cost information for new PCs.
6. Acquire technical and cost information for new software versions.
7. Create cost-benefit analysis.
8. End project.

For our activity diagram network, we have to have a starting point and an ending point. Our starting point could be receiving a signed contract or SOW. Our ending point could be presenting a report to upper management. For our purposes here, Start Project and End Project will be used. Now, we can start creating our network diagram. If we determined that interviewing employees needed to occur after first interviewing supervisors, then we would have a sequential network diagram with a path resembling the one shown below.

This means that we have to determine the network logic. For example, below is the network logic for this example.

• Activity A: The project starts immediately.
• Activity B cannot start until the Activity A has been completed.
• Activity C cannot start until Activity B has been completed.
• Activity D cannot occur until C has been completed.

However, if we determine that interviewing supervisors and employees can happen at the same time, then the activity network would have a path resembling the one shown below.

A.       Start Project

1. Interview Supervisors
   1. Interview Employees

1. Next Activity

For example, below is the network logic that would work for this example.

• Activity A: The project starts immediately.
• Activity B and C cannot begin until Activity A has been completed.
• Activity D cannot occur until both B and C have been completed.

Of course, this is a simplified version. You will have a lot more boxes, also known as activity nodes, in between Start Project and End Project. Just remember that all activities have to be within the confines of the start box and the end box. In other words, you cannot have any extra paths for activities that do not ultimately end up at End Project.

Note: There is key terminology for your activity network diagram and for the rest of the concepts in the chapter on pages 317–318 of the textbook. Be sure that you become very familiar with these terms.

Of course, we are not finished building our network diagram. Once we determine which tasks or activities have to occur first and the order in which they occur, we can assign predecessors. We can also enter our most likely activity durations. See the graphic below.

In this example, we can do activities B and C at the same time after A is complete. We cannot gather technical information (Activity D) until activities B and C are both completed. The same goes for activities E and F. We can do activities E and F at the same time, but Activity G cannot start until both E and F are completed.

Now, based on our predecessors, we can create our entire simple network diagram; see below.

There are other examples of this process and the ending activity network in your textbook starting on page 322.

This is a simple activity network, but your real network diagram will include activity nodes instead of plain boxes. Activity nodes have a lot of information in them.

So, for our sample project, the node for Activity B would resemble the graphic below.

If you notice above, Activity B shows a two-day duration placeholder. In reality, the PM would need to calculate this estimated duration timeframe. We start this process by assigning an optimistic duration, a most likely duration, and a pessimistic duration.

Now, which duration do we actually use? We have to calculate the estimated duration for each activity. The formula is shown below.

(Optimistic + (Most likely * 4) + Pessimistic) / 6

Now the PM can make a decision to round up or round down; see below.

The estimated duration can now be used to construct your critical path. The critical path involves determining the minimum time needed for a project to be completed on the due date. It is the longest sequence of activities.

If you look back at our activity network, we have several paths, which are listed below.

• Path One: A – B - D – E – G – H
• Path Two: A – B - D – F – G – H
• Path Three: A – C - D – E – G – H
• Path Four: A – C - D – F – G – H

So, to calculate the number of days for each path, see below.

• Path One: A – B - D – E – G – H = 2 + 2 + 3 + 9 + 2 + 2 = 20 days
• Path Two: A – B - D – F – G – H = 2 + 2 + 3 + 10 + 2 + 2 = 21 days
• Path Three: A – C - D – E – G – H = 2 + 3 + 3 + 9 + 2 + 2 = 21 days
• Path Four: A – C - D – F – G – H = 2 + 3 + 3 + 10 + 2 + 2 = 22 days

As you can see, our critical path is Path Four, and we have to have 22 days for our project. Path Four has no slack time. According to Pinto (2019), slack time is also known as float time and is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without ultimately risking delaying the finish of the project.