- Welcome to module eight, part two where we continue the quality theme. And in this video we were going to be looking at quality planning, quality assurance and quality control. What do we mean by those terms? We have in chapter eight, section 1.1 the discussion of the different quality activities and if you look at Figure 8.1 there is actually another graphical representation is the quality audit trail. So you can match up some of what I'm talking about here to that diagram 8.1. And we're going to take it from quality planning. Quality planning is where it all starts off. In quality planning we are preparing for quality. And this is where we will start thinking about making that project product description. It's where we go to the customer and say what do you want to make? What would be fit for purpose? So the project product description is that special kind of product description that defines what the project must deliver in order to gain acceptance so. We create that and we then agree the quality management approach and so the quality management approach describes how quality will be managed in the project and so it will include specific processes, procedures, techniques, standards, responsibilities to be applied to the project regarding quality. So for example, are we going to need a pilot or a survey in this project to test a particular product? If so, we need to agree with the customer what they mean by that? If they say they want a survey or a pilot we need to know how many people are going to be involved because of course these things cost money. The project manager might think we only need to show this new product to five people for an hour but the customer might be thinking well, we need to show it to 5000 people for a week. We are going to have a falling out with the customer if we don't get this straightened out before we start the project. So we need to agree that quality management approach. So this will work with less complex projects. Obviously this is maybe not so much of an issue but certainly for your large, complex projects, we need to get these things lined out and certainly, if you're in a commercial customer supplier relationship definitely need to get these things agreed in advance. So we agree the quality management approach and then we need to think about the product descriptions of products that we need to make in the project. So we know what the project product's going to be. Maybe it's a new car or a new boat or a new restructure department, but what are the major products going to be? What do they look like? How are they going to be made? Who's going to make them and test them and approve them? We need to think about that. So we'll start with creating product descriptions for those. So the product description is used to understand the product. Each product that we need to make and we will record the level of quality required from that product and the skills and activities required to produce, review and finally, approve it. And there may be thousands of product descriptions, depending on the kind of project we're working on. All of those products will be planned to be made. So there will be in the stage plan, for the relevant stage a point where we hand out a work package to a team manager and they make the product for us. And they don't just have to make the product, they have to make sure it's fit for purpose. They have to make sure it's tested or reviewed. And then approved, they can't return the product to the project manager and say we're done, we're finished until they can demonstrate that it has been approved. So the project manager will create a quality register. That will help them manage all these quality events. So the quality register is used to summarise all the quality management activities that are planned or have taken place because once we have tested the products and we know the result, they either passed or failed the test, we will update the quality register with the results and that information in the quality register will be very helpful for the project manager when it comes to them writing their regular reports or analysing issues as they arise. So up til now we haven't actually really made anything. I've just been thinking about quality planning. So we've just been preparing for quality. Creating the project product description, the quality management approach, writing product descriptions as required and then creating that quality register and filling it in with the details of the planned quality events. So that sort of quality planning will do that first. Then we can start thinking about handing out work packages and then the team managers are busy in quality control. So in quality control, the team managers are making the products and they need to check the quality criteria in the product descriptions that they've been given to check that they have met the quality criteria for each product. They will then test the product, hopefully it will pass. Or not, it might not but either way they will update the quality register with the results of each of these quality activities. And this gives us an opportunity to learn from experience and that is one of our principles, don't forget. Continuous improvement is what we're aiming for here. We will learn from our mistakes. So if we have a product that fails a particular test, then we will have to think about why that happened and part of quality control then is looking for ways to improve quality so that next time we make a similar product, it will get through that test first time hopefully. So that's quality control. Making the products, testing the products or reviewing them. Then updating the register, quality register with the results and reflecting on how we can improve. Quality assurance is a little bit different. Quality assurance is where there is an audit of the project and that audit will check that the project is compliant with the relevant corporate programme or customer processes and procedures. Effectively, quality assurance is where we give confidence to corporate or the programme or the customer up there. We were in the project management team, we've got project assurance here and so this is different from project assurance. Quality assurance is independent of the project. So if you think of a project management team here. We've got corporate up above, quality assurance sits up there with the corporate or programme level. They are able to, and don't take this the wrong way if you're in this part of the business, stick their nose into anyone's business and this is a good thing. We need them to check that we are following the right processes and procedures. So they can stick their nose in our project, in all the other projects that are running at the same time and also they can audit business as usual as well and check that business as usual are complying with the relevant processes and procedures. So quality assurance is important to us. We need to know whether or not we can get audited at any time. I'm sure some of you are working for large organisations and you have a compliance team and they can maybe audit you with very little warning. That's effectively quality assurance. So quality assurance don't really sit inside our project management team. They're sitting up above at the corporate level. But we need to know what the situation is. Do they have to give us a day's warning or a week or a month? Can they just rock up at any time and just audit us? We need to know. So that's part of our quality activities to establish what the criteria are for being audited around here. So we will actually record our plans and strategies for quality planning, quality control and quality assurance. We'll put all of those in our official management product which is on the next slide here, the quality management approach. So there are two official management products that I need to tell you about and the quality management approach is where we record how we do things around here regarding quality. What's our strategy for dealing with quality? So it's here that we will record how quality will be managed. What processes and procedures are we using? What techniques and standards would be applied? And when will we be audited if at all by quality assurance? And then we have the other document, the quality register. Which is used to summarise all of the quality management activities that are planned or have taken place. So there you go, that's the end of our module.