Project Quality—Not Product Quality

by Andrea Brockmeier, PMP

When was the last time you gave thought to project quality? Project quality, not product quality. The quality of the products we create is fairly easy to think about. The product conforms to specification (it does what it says it supposed to do) and it meets a real need. The proverbial car that never needs repair that people use for transportation comes to mind. But what of project quality? We don't as often think about that one. Project quality objectives, once defined, can be applied to all projects in the organization. If schedule is the hot button for your organization, maybe monitoring variation from the schedule baseline or milestone dates would be an appropriate project quality metric. We often hear that communications is the biggest opportunity area for projects. How could communications effectiveness be measured and quality objectives be defined around that? Meeting attendance could be an appropriate project quality metric. For example, if consistent meeting attendance by all invitees is considered to be an indicator of a high project, it might be enlightening to monitor that variable for projects. Then at the conclusion of the project, evaluate that project quality result and compare it to how well the project achieved the organization's definition of project success. If they seem to be positively correlated, good quality assurance and control will enable you to be more proactive in delivering project success.

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