Brianna has a masters of education in educational leadership, a DBA business management, and a BS in animal science.
What Is Quality Planning? - Definition, Process & Tools
Quality Planning Defined
Meet Molly. Molly just found out that she will be the new leader for an upcoming project. Because this is her first project, she decides to do some research on how to effectively lead a project. The first place she starts is by determining the most important aspects of the project; essentially, she is determining which standards are necessary in order to successfully complete the project. Molly learns that she needs to identify what standards are relevant to the project and how she and her team will meet them. This is known as quality planning and is the focus of this lesson.
Quality planning is the task of determining what factors are important to a project and figuring out how to meet those factors. Such factors often include the resources that will be used, the steps needed to complete the project and any other specifications. So for Molly, this means she needs to plan what resources the project will need, determine the cost of those resources, plan a timeline for completing the project, outline the steps she and her team will take, and she will need to assign the tasks and responsibilities to each person.
Quality Planning Process
Now that Molly knows what quality planning is, the next step is to learn about the process. Let's take a look at some of the common steps.
- Who does what? The first step is to understand what the leader will do. Because the leader is in charge of monitoring the project, it is important to know how the leader will do this. For Molly, this means she needs to know how she will oversee the project. How will she know if the project is moving along successfully? How will she recognize when there is a problem?
- Documents. We all know that companies document many different things. The same is true when a company is completing a project. So, when outlining the quality planning of a project, Molly needs to know which documents will be used to communicate with the rest of the team. She also needs to know how she will manage all of the documents and how they will be used with the project.
- Procedures. A project cannot begin without knowing where to start and which steps and tasks need to be completed. This means that Molly will need to know what the goals and requirements are for the project so she can plan the steps to meet those goals and requirements.
- Design. Because projects are often completed for a customer, it's important that the design of the project is correct. In order to do so, all of the specifics will need to be outlined and reviewed with a sign-off by the client. Molly's project is also being completed for a customer, so she realizes that she needs to fully explain the design of the project and get approval from the client before she can proceed.
- Monitoring. Like most projects, the leader needs to know how well the project is going. Is the project on time? Are all the steps being completed correctly? Is the project of quality work? Molly knows that in order to keep the project running smoothly, she will need to get regular updates on the progress. This will also allow her to know when there is a problem.
- Conclusion and wrap-up. Once the project is completed, the manager will want to make sure that the customer is happy and approves of the project. The manager will also want to make sure the project meets the quality standards that the company stands for. This is also when the team discusses what went well and areas that can be improved for future projects. When Molly gets to this step, she will be sure to have a meeting with her team to discuss the project and get feedback on what the team feels they did well on and areas they need to fix.
Tools for Quality Planning
Now let's take a look at the tools a company can use when implementing quality planning.
- Charts and diagrams. There are many different types of charts and diagrams can use. For example, cause and effect diagrams can help a team see where a problem occurred and better understand what caused it. Charts can help a team map out the flow of the project so they can visualize the steps. Molly feels a good starting tool would be a flow chart to map out the steps in her project.
- Benchmarking. Companies use this process as a means of comparing the project with other similar projects. This can be beneficial for Molly as she will be able to see if her project is of similar quality to other projects her company has completed, as well as determining areas her and her team can improve on.
- Check sheets. We have all used a check sheet to make sure we do not forget anything. The same can be used when working on a project. Molly can use a check sheet to determine if her team is following the steps of the project.
Lesson Summary
Quality planning is the task of determining what factors are important to a project and figuring out how to meet those factors. Some common steps in the process include knowing responsibilities, outlining documents, understanding procedures, designing, monitoring and wrapping up. Some important tools to help successfully complete a project are charts and diagrams, benchmarking and check sheets.
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