Questions and Answers of Project Quality Management

Describe several views of quality in the context of your own knowledge or experience. Include at least three of the following: products, defects, processes, customers, systems, or others.
Select a product (goods or services) about which you have some personal knowledge. Explain how Juran’s two components of features and freedom from failures relate to the quality of that product.
Discuss the cost of quality considering failure, prevention, and appraisal costs. Give examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Explore specifically the costs of internal and external failures. Which one can be more expensive? Give examples, imagined or from your own experience.
From your own experience—school, work, social organizations—describe the benefits of quality in real-world situations. Give examples.
a. Prepare a matrix that explores Juran’s concept of “fitness for purpose.”In the first column, list at least six examples of products: two hard goods, two services, two elements of
Discuss quality in the era of craft production. Who was responsible for quality? How were customer requirements determined? How did design and production influence quality? How was consistent quality
Describe Taylor’s concept of scientific management and how it influenced quality. Who was responsible for what? How was Taylor’s concept a step forward? What was not addressed?
Explain Juran’s view of variation and how it influenced quality. Give some examples of variation in both manufacturing and administrative contexts. How can variation within a project come into
What is the role and importance of inspection in quality performance?How can inspection hinder quality? Describe some good ways of using inspection to achieve quality results.
How did Japanese scientists and engineers expand the view of quality?What were the benefits?
Discuss the role of customers in quality. Why are they important?What do they influence?
What are the basic elements of a quality system? What is the role of each element? How do they interact?
Describe quality “then” and “now.” How may one approach be more effective than the other?
a. Prepare an annotated Wheel of Quality for a product (goods or services) that you know something about. Draw the Wheel on a large sheet of flip-chart paper so you have room to fill in the various
Discuss the principal contributions of Walter Shewart to quality, including the two types of variation he described.
Describe the overall contribution of Deming’s “Fourteen Points” to quality. Pick three that might apply to your personal experience and discuss in detail. How does each point lead to
Explain the difference between Juran’s concepts of control and breakthrough.
Summarize Crosby’s concept of “quality is free.” From your personal knowledge and experience, what activities contribute to quality? Is quality really free?
What were the major contributions to quality by Ishikawa and Taguchi?
What are the foundation and goals of the Six Sigma approach to quality? Is this a universal approach that may be applied to all activities in all domains?
Describe the ISO 9000 approach to quality. What is the basic goal?What are the key elements?
Explain the purpose of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. How might it be used internally for an improvement effort?
a. Obtain a copy of the award criteria for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Pick a category (business/nonprofit, education, health care) in which you have interest, experience, or a
Name the four elements of quality management. Explain how they relate to each other and why each one is important.
Describe the purpose of a quality management plan. Describe the basic elements of a good plan.
From your personal knowledge or experience, give or create several examples of quality policy statements. Explain the strengths or possible weaknesses of each one.
What is the role of customers in quality planning? Why are they important?Should they be prioritized? If so, how important is the final priority ranking?
Discuss the role of requirements in quality planning. Include the issue of prioritization.
What is the role of standards in quality planning? From your personal knowledge or experience, describe several existing standards that might come into play when managing various kinds of projects.
What is the role of specifications in quality planning? How do operational definitions link specifications to requirements?
From your personal knowledge or experience, develop at least three operational definitions and describe how they might be used to link requirements and specifications.
a. From your personal experience, select a product (goods or services) that you know something about. Develop a list of at least five customers that might be associated with the product. Prioritize
Explain why quality assurance must stand alone as a separate element of quality management.
How does quality assurance serve as a link between quality planning and quality control?
What is the role of quality assurance activities? Describe the process for defining activities.
Why are quality metrics important? What is their role? How are they developed?
Discuss the purpose of a quality assurance plan. Describe the various elements and explain their importance.
How do quality audits contribute to overall quality management?What are the advantages or disadvantages of internal and external audits?
a. Choose a product or activity about which you have some personal knowledge. An activity may be something simple like a party, sports event, concert, or vacation. Sketch out the requirements for
Discuss the role of results in quality control. Why are results important?
What is the purpose of inspection in quality control? How may it be best applied?
Why is quality improvement necessary? Address this from different points of view.
Discuss potential hurdles to quality improvement. How may they be overcome?
Describe the plan-do-check-act cycle. Explain the four elements.How is the “check” element related to the subsequently named“study” element?
a. Identify a process or activity about which you have personal knowledge. Identify an improvement opportunity. Develop and describe a plan-do-check-act project that will accomplish the
Describe the four steps in developing a check sheet for collecting data. Why is a check sheet useful? How is it different from a checklist?
Explain how line graphs, bar graphs, and circle graphs might be used for understanding different types of data. Why not use the same type of graph for all types of data?
Why is a histogram a special type of bar graph? Describe how data are organized and how the graph is constructed.
Explain why a Pareto chart is a special type of bar graph. Describe how the data are arranged and how the data are interpreted.
What is the purpose of a scatter diagram? Describe how it is constructed and how the data are interpreted. Can scatter diagrams be used to look to the future?
Create a check sheet for collecting data about something that interests you. Be creative, e.g., go to a fast food restaurant during lunch and collect data on orders for a given period. (You may need
Prepare a line graph, bar graph, and circle graph using simple data that are available to you.
Prepare a histogram with data that are readily available to you, e.g., the individual height of your classmates and all their family members.
Prepare a Pareto chart with data that are available to you. If you visit a fast food restaurant for Exercise 1, perhaps you could use the individual menu items as categories. They are not defects per
Prepare a scatter diagram using data available to you. If you collected height data in Exercise 3, perhaps you could link this with age data and use that for one axis, height for the other.Exercise
How do flow charts help in understanding processes? Should a good flow chart be very broad or more narrow in scope? Should a flow chart be comprehensive or just cover the basics?
What information do run charts disclose? Why is this helpful in understanding processes?
Discuss the purpose and usefulness of control charts. What does “in control” mean? What is the difference between the voice of the process and the voice of the customer? How are each one
Prepare a flow chart for a common process with which you have personal knowledge or experience.
Prepare a run chart for a common activity in which you have personal knowledge or experience, e.g., daily commute either by conveyance or on foot, daily expenditures for lunch, daily outside
If possible, collect some data on a repeatable process in which you are involved and prepare a control chart. Use the type of chart described in this chapter with the associated number and type of
What is the purpose of cause and effect diagrams? Why are they useful?How are cause categories selected? How is data developed and analyzed?
What kinds of situations suggest the use of pillar diagrams? What is the outcome of applying a pillar diagram?
One of the members of your class or perhaps a friend is having a birthday next month. You and several others would like to throw a party. The last time you did this, it did not go well. Prepare a
Identify some kind of task or activity with which you have personal knowledge or experience that may include multiple problems arising from multiple causes. Prepare a pillar diagram to analyze the
Discuss the purpose and usefulness of force field analysis. What is the basic principle? What is the basic goal?
Describe the two approaches to brainstorming. When might one be more useful than the other? What are some advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
How do affinity diagrams help make sense of large amounts of data?What source of knowledge do they tap into? How do they reduce bias?
Discuss the purpose and usefulness of nominal group technique and multi-voting. What is the purpose of multi-voting? What is the benefit of anonymous idea generation and voting?
Identify a situation with which you are familiar that includes multiple contributing factors. Prepare a force field analysis chart that will allow you to develop a plan to improve the situation.
With a group of classmates or colleagues, conduct a brainstorming session using each of the two approaches. Did one work better than the other? Were you able to stick to the “rules of the road”?
Pick a moderately complex problem or situation with multiple contributing factors. On your own, identify a large number of contributing factors. Organize them and make sense of them using an affinity
With a small group of classmates or colleagues, pick a problem or situation of moderate interest and analyze it using nominal group technique and multi-voting.
How may a compliance matrix be used as a simple checklist? How may it be used in a more extensive way?
Describe the purpose and usefulness of peer review. What are the benefits? What are the potential pitfalls?
From some convenient public source (local business, government, professional associations), obtain a request for proposal. Keep it small. Prepare a compliance matrix up to the point of writing an
With a few classmates or colleagues you trust—and in a non-competitive and non-punitive environment—share some actual work papers and conduct a peer review.
What is the basic message of the Red Bead Experiment? Why is this important in managing quality?
Discuss the practical or perhaps superficial utility of the various contributing factors by management in the Red Bead Experiment described in this chapter. Explain why these contributing factors may
How can excessive focus on the bottom line hinder quality in a project?What kind of financial goals or concerns can come into play?
Describe how reluctance to change can hinder quality in a project.Where does this reluctance come from?
How can taking offense at improvement suggestions hinder quality in a project? Why does this response occur?
Describe how excessive focus on solving problems can hinder quality in a project. Why might a project team focus on problems to the exclusion of other matters?
Explain how organization or individual culture can hinder quality in a project. Where does culture, both organizational and individual,come from? Can culture be changed?
Describe how the various disablers of quality may be overcome.Consider all of the disablers mentioned in this chapter.
a. Do a mini-intervention in a project or work group to which you have access. Interview the members and explore the possible existence of the quality disablers described here.b. If you feel