Chapter 24

Monitoring and Controlling

Quality
TOPIC COVERED

Control Quality

Control Quality
Control Quality is the process of monitoring and recording results of
executing the quality activities to assess performance and recommend
necessary changes. As you recall, quality is concerned with both the
project and the product. In this process you will review the project
results and compare them to the project metrics, such as budget per-
formance and variance, and schedule performance and variance. You
will also assess the degree to which the deliverables meet the quality
metrics and requirements. As mentioned previously, product quality
metrics are specific to the particular product and organization.
The Control Quality process has some specific concepts associ-
Copyright © 2013. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ated with measuring compliance that you should be familiar with. Let’s
take a look at those.

Quality Control Terminology

Inspection. Examining or measuring to verify whether an activ-
ity, component, product, result, or service conforms to specified
requirements.
Attribute Sampling. Method of measuring quality that consists of
noting the presence (or absence) of some characteristic (attribute) in
each of the units under consideration. After each unit is inspected, the
decision is made to accept a lot, reject it, or to inspect another unit.
Tolerance. The quantified description of acceptable variation for a
quality requirement.
Control Limits. The area composed of three standard deviations on
either side of the centerline, or mean, of a normal distribution of data
plotted on a control chart that reflects the expected variation in the data.

231
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 232 Chapter 24 Monitoring and Controlling Quality

Table 24-1 Examples of Quality Control Terminology

Prevention. If we are building a new heating component we employ the information from past success-
Establishing processes to ful components, use our most senior designers, and establish a backup temporary heating
make sure errors or defects device that will start in the event the primary device does not start, or fails mid-cycle.
don’t occur.
Inspection We can test every heating component against the requirements before it is approved.
Attribute sampling If the metric is that the oven must heat to 525, you can use a thermometer to determine if
the temperature reaches 525. An easier definition of attribute sampling is determining if the
result conforms or not.
Variable sampling. If a target is to heat to 525 and the oven temperature is 510, then it has achieved 97 per-
Determining the degree of cent of the target.
conformity.
Tolerance If the target is 525 you may have a ± 10 tolerance. In other words, any measurement from
515 to 535 is acceptable.
Control limits If you are measuring how long it takes the oven to reach 525 and you have an average
time of 12 minutes and a range of 8 to 16 minutes, you may determine that any oven you
test that heats faster or slower than that is not behaving as expected. There is something
that is causing it to be out of the control limit and you should determine the variable that is
causing the behavior.
An easier way of thinking of control limits is as the thresholds that determine whether a
process is in or out of control.

Some of those definitions are pretty complex. Table 24-1 pro-

vides some examples to help make the terms easier to understand
in the context of quality control. The table also includes definitions
for prevention and variable sampling, which are not included in the
PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition Glossary, but are used when you are
controlling quality.
In the Plan Quality Management process we used some of the
same techniques we will be looking at for this process, however, in
that planning process we were establishing the control limits, toler-
Copyright © 2013. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ances and determining the sampling populations. In this process we

will be applying those tools to measure the correctness of deliver-
ables to determine if we are within in the control limits and toler-
ances. As with all the control processes we will compare the plan to
the results to determine if we need to take any corrective or preven-
tive actions, repair any defects, or make any changes.
Figure 24-1 shows the inputs, tools and techniques and outputs
for the Control Quality process. Figure 24-2 shows a data flow dia-
gram for the Control Quality process.

INPUTS
The project management plan contains the quality management plan
which outlines how the team will meet the quality metrics, standards,
and requirements for the project and product. In some cases a qual-
ity checklist is used to make sure the team performs a series of steps
needed to meet the quality requirements.

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 Control Quality 233

Figure 24-1
Control Quality: Inputs, Tools and Techniques, Outputs
Source: PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition
Copyright © 2013. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Figure 24-2
Control Quality Data Flow Diagram
Source: PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition

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 234 Chapter 24 Monitoring and Controlling Quality

Work performance data are compared to the established toler-

ances and control limits to determine if the project performance for
scope, schedule, and cost are performing acceptably. The deliver-
ables are compared to the quality metrics to determine if they meet
the specified acceptance criteria.
One of the outputs of the Perform Integrated Change Control
process is approved change requests. For those changes that were
approved, the implementation of the change needs to be validated
to ensure the changes are implemented in a timely fashion and
appropriately.
Project documents, such as audit reports from Perform Quality
Assurance, corrective action plans, process documentation and
results from deploying any of the quality management tools and
techniques are used in the Control Quality process.
The organizational process assets include project and product
performance standards, quality management policies, procedures,
forms and templates, and any defect management procedures. These
items provide a system and guidance in how to apply the qual-
ity management plan in a manner consistent with the organization’s
infrastructure.

TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

The seven basic quality tools that were described in the Plan Quality
Management process are implemented here to determine if the deliv-
erables meet the metrics and quality requirements and specifications.
As a reminder, those seven basic quality tools are:

■ Cause and effect diagram

■ Flowcharts
■ Checksheets
■ Pareto charts
■ Histograms
Copyright © 2013. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

■ Control charts
■ Scatter diagrams

In the Plan Quality Management process we looked at statisti-

cal sampling to determine the number of items we should test and
the timing of the tests. In the Control Quality process we perform
the actual testing of items to ensure they comply with requirements.
Once we select the items, we will perform an inspection. Inspection
can take the obvious form of looking at the item to see if it conforms
to a specification, however, not all requirements and standards can
be determined just by looking at something. Sometimes we need to
measure the outcome (such as size, weight, or proportion). Other
times we may need to conduct tests to determine if the item per-
forms as expected. If we are inspecting a process or a deliverable
composed of several pieces and parts, an inspection can be called a
walkthrough, a review, or other terms that are industry specific.

Stackpole, C. S., & Stackpole, S. C. (2013). A user's manual to the pmbok guide. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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 Control Quality 235

The approved change requests from the Perform Integrated

Change Control process are reviewed to ensure they were imple-
mented properly.

OUTPUTS
All the testing and tools and techniques applied in this process result
in quality control measurements. These are the quantifiable results
and outcomes of the quality control activities. If the results are sat-
isfactory, they are documented and the deliverables are verified as
being correct. They will then go through the Validate Scope process.
If the results are not satisfactory a change request is initiated. The
change request may entail a defect repair for the deliverable, or it
may entail preventive or corrective action for the process involved in
creating the deliverable. The approved change requests are consid-
ered validated changes using this same approach.
Work performance information contains contextualized infor-
mation about how well the quality processes are performing, defect
rates and sources, causes of rework and rejections, and information
on any processes that need modifications or improvements.
The quality management plan and process improvement
plan are components of the project management plan that may be
updated. Quality standards or metrics are project documents that
may be updated.
The completed checklists, inspection results, and other corre-
sponding documentation are considered organizational process asset
updates. Lessons learned about the cause of defects and the resulting
repair or corrective actions should also be recorded and added to the
organizational process assets.
Copyright © 2013. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Stackpole, C. S., & Stackpole, S. C. (2013). A user's manual to the pmbok guide. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Created from uta-ebooks on 2022-01-12 17:37:02.

c24.indd 235 10/01/13 4:13 PM

Copyright © 2013. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Stackpole, C. S., & Stackpole, S. C. (2013). A user's manual to the pmbok guide. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Created from uta-ebooks on 2022-01-12 17:37:02.

c24.indd 236 10/01/13 4:13 PM