EXECUTING STAGE (QUALITY) : PERFORM QUALITY ASSURANCE

This is the process in the executing stage whereby the quality requirements specified in the project management plan particularly in the quality management plan are audited to ensure that quality standards are met and avoid defects at the end of the project. It is the continuous process improvement of quality in all the processes so that the activities that do not add any value to the project are eliminated.

The inputs used to Perform Quality Assurance process are:

• The quality management plan that describes in detail about the quality assurance and continuous process improvement.
• Quality metrics that show the attributes for quality measurement and allowable variations.
• Quality control measurements that are used to evaluate the quality of the process against the specified one and determine the level of correctness.
• Process improvement plan to make sure that quality assurance process is supportive of the organization.

This process can be performed by:

• Using quality management and control tools such as seven basic quality tools like checksheets, Pareto, histogram etc (please refer https://projectforsuccess.blogspot.com/2017/11/planning-stage-quality-plan-quality.html)
• Quality auditing to determine if the project activities fulfil the organizational and project policies, processes and procedures, by identifying the best practices implemented and gaps or shortcomings, offering the assistance of improving the implementation of the processes, sharing good practices implemented in similar previous projects and highlights all the contributions as the lessons learnt. This process can be scheduled or randomly performed internally or externally by auditors.
• Process analysis whereby the problem is identified, the cause of the problem is discovered and preventive action is developed in order to improve the process. It examines all the problems, constraints and non-value added activities occurred in the process.

The outputs are change requests used to allow corrective and preventive actions to take place as recommended improvements and updates in the project management plan, organizational process assets such as organization quality standards, quality audit reports and so forth.

References:

PMI (2013). A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide 5^th Ed.) USA, Project Management Institute

https://www.slideshare.net/sabaafaq52/quality-management-slides