Slide 9.

Chapter 9
Stakeholders and quality
• Introduction
• The concept of quality and quality management
• Quality performance and conformance
• Towards quality improvement
• Summary
Project management in practice: Adopting a standard
for project planning – useful discipline or
unnecessary constraint?

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.2

Introduction

• Introducing a process for identification and

management of stakeholders
• Key to stakeholder satisfaction is quality
• There are several definitions of quality
– Quality of the tangible product
– Quality of the intangible service
– Quality as a customer expectation
– Quality as a customer perception
• Key techniques
– Quality planning
– The management of conformance and performance
– Managing the expectations and perceptions of
stakeholders Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 9.3

Introduction
• Imagine a project to build a stadium that is mostly made of
concrete . The concrete part of the stadium is two-thirds
poured when the buyer arrives one day and testes the
strength of the concrete , they find that it does not meet the
clearly stated quality requirements for the concrete strength
in the contract.
• You imagine the problems when the buyer says “ Rip out
the concrete , it is not acceptable
• Whose fault is this?
• Why did this occur?
• can we see it is the buyers’ fault that he did not test the
concrete sooner?
• no , it is a question of where is the quality plan?

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.4

Introduction
• What is project quality?
– The degree to which the project fulfills requirements
• What is quality management
– Creating and following policies and procedures in order to
ensure that a project meets the defined needs it was intended
to meet.
– Completing the project without deviations from the project
requirements
– Quality management includes
• Quality planning
• Quality assurance
• Quality control

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.5

Project Quality considerations

• Quality considerations
– PM should consider the quality cost if change is required to
time/cost/quality
– Quality should be checked before an activity is completed
– Quality should continually monitored and improved
– Project scope statement is baseline for quality
– Ask the customer about his definition of quality
– Decide your quality control system
– Decide the required Meetings , reports , measurements and
calculation
– Evaluate the effectiveness of quality control system

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.6

Impact of poor Project Quality

• Increased cost
• Low moral
• Low customer satisfaction
• Increased risk
• Rework
• Schedule delays

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.7

Quality management
Planning Assurance Control
Find existing quality Determine if the Measure specific
standards for project is complying results
produce with the standards
Create additional Perform continuous Implement approved
project specific improvement changes
standard
Determine how will Correct deficiencies Repair defects
meet the standard
Balance need for Identify improvement Recommend change
quality with cost, risk
and satisfaction
Create quality plan Recommend
and add it to project changes and
management plan corrective actions
Prepare check list
List of items to
inspect

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.8

9.1 The concept of quality and quality

management
• Traditional approaches to quality focus entirely on
product
– But many stakeholders will receive an intangible service
• So what is quality and does it matter?
• Definitions of quality should focus
– Internally: the prerogative of the project team
– Externally: the domain of the marketing or other
business people, dependent of communications
– A combination: ‘the bridge’ (see over) – leads to
success
– Caveat/caution : there will always be an element of
quality that remains elusive /indefinable
Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 9.9

9.1 The concept of quality and quality

management (Continued)

Figure 9.1 Bridge model of project quality management

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.10

9.1 The concept of quality and quality

management (Continued)
• The product based view (an internal view)
– Definable and measurable set of characteristics
– Fit for purpose
– Conforming to specification
– Defect free
• Customer expectations and perceptions (external
view)
– The level of quality expected compared to the level
perceived to have been received
– Mix/Synthesis of objective and subjective elements of
product and service
– A judgement of value
Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 9.11

9.1 The concept of quality and quality

management (Continued)

Table 9.1 Perspectives on quality management

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.12

9.1 The concept of quality and quality

management (Continued)
Quality and stakeholder satisfaction
• A general principle of stakeholder management:
the need to appreciate customer behaviour
• The nature of satisfaction
– Satisfaction equals
• the perception (of what has been received) less
• the expectation (of what was to be received)
[Maister’s first law]
– Greatest cause of dissatisfaction is the creation of
unrealistic expectations

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.13

9.1 The concept of quality and quality

management (Continued)
– Unpacking the gap(s) between perception and
expectation
• Customer requirements and management’s
perceptions of these requirements
• This perception of requirements and the written
specification
• This specification and the product/process delivered
• The product/service and what communications have
led the customer to expect

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.14

9.1 The concept of quality and quality

management (Continued)
Quality function deployment
– A tool that attempts to minimise gaps between
expectations of a stakeholder and the project
delivery (process and outcome)
– First – the customer expresses requirements in
the customer’s own language
– This language is then correlated with that of the
project teams

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.15

9.1 The concept of quality and quality

management (Continued)
– ‘The what’ (requirement) can then be related to ‘the
how’ (project delivery)
– Customers then asked to prioritise ‘the whats’; this
indicates how perceptions can be managed
– Customer perceptions of competitor performance is
added
– A further correlation between ‘the hows’
(complimentary or conflicting) and ‘the whats’
indicates a framework for making trade-offs

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.16

9.2 Quality performance and

conformance
• The quality planning process
– Project quality should be defined from both
customer and organisational view points

Figure 9.2 Quality planning process

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.17

9.2 Quality performance and

conformance (Continued)
• Quality may be conformance to specification and
measurable (manufacturing)
• Quality may be determined by customer orientation,
expectations and perceptions (service)

Table 9.2 Manufacturing and service approaches to quality

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.18

9.2 Quality performance and

conformance (Continued)
Quality conformance planning (quality assurance)
• The project manual
• A means of ‘planning for achieving’ and a demonstration of the
plan
Introduction – reasoning behind project
Planning – objectives, scope, WBS, schedule, budget,
contingencies and risk analysis
Execution details – schedules, responsibilities, procedures,
forms, organisational structure
Records – minutes of meetings, notes on problems and how
they were dealt with, changes, status reports,
other correspondence
Misc information – contact details, technical reference
materials etc.
Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 9.19

9.2 Quality performance and

conformance (Continued)
• Responsibility allocation
– Resource availability to carry out the tasks is key
– Plans to be credible must consider limitations of
availability of people and equipment

Figure 9.3 Responsibility matrix

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.20

9.2 Quality performance and

conformance (Continued)
Quality performance planning
– The nature of satisfaction
• Customer cues and managing consumer expectations
– How to manage the process by which the service provided
by the project is delivered
• Tangibles, often the core product, readily assessed
• Intangibles (often the process)
– Responsiveness
– Communication
– Competence/professionalism
– Courtesy
– Accessibility
• Judgements often made on the peripheral (or support) elements

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.21

9.2 Quality performance and

conformance (Continued)

Table 9.3 Management of expectations and perceptions

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.22

9.2 Quality performance and

conformance (Continued)
• Communications planning
– Keeping stakeholders in the loop is a vital part of quality
planning
– A table identifying the ‘grand communications’ is a common
technique
– Beware e-mail overload

Table 9.4 Communication plan

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.23

9.3 Towards quality improvement

• Quality costs
– Quality management involves the cost of quality
– Quality is not free
– Costing quality is not simple
– Elements of prevention, appraisal and failure
– Elements are often subjective and will vary project
to project
– The objective is not to simply measure costs or
create more work
– The objective is to allow a process of investigation
facilitating a reduction of quality costs
Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 9.24

9.3 Towards quality improvement

(Continued)

Table 9.5 Quality cost categories

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.25

9.3 Towards quality improvement

(Continued)
• Management of failure (recovery)
– Required where a stakeholder (particularly the
customer) becomes dissatisfied
– Rescue the current situation
• Learn from it
• Prevent ‘consumer terrorism’
– Management process
• Identify what has gone wrong
• Contain the situation – accept, prevent further damage or
escalation
• Put in place recovery actions – regain customer
confidence
• Ensure practices change

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.26

9.3 Towards quality improvement

(Continued)
• Variability
– Service projects exhibit greater variability
• Involvement of customer in delivery
• Reliance on staff for quality
– Not a problem if high margin customised service
– Is a problem if high volume throughput and
standardised service required
• Staff may introduce variability
• Not appropriate for customers
– In general, the lower levels of the WBS should
show lower variability
Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Slide 9.27

Summary

• Diversity of definitions of quality

– for product and service
– for core and peripheral outputs
• Strategic and customer inputs are necessary to
manage quality
– These translate into quality assurance, quality
conformance, customer satisfaction
– Quality conformance requires a documented system
– the project manual

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011

Slide 9.28

Summary (Continued)

– Customers have
• expectations (before the experience)
• perceptions (post experience)
• gaps between will lead to delight (when the former is
lower) or dissatisfaction (when the latter is lower)
• Quality costs
– Investment in improving quality and prevention of
failures will reduce costs.

Maylor, Project Management, 4th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011