Quality Management Plan Template is a well-structured and well-defined set of documents and reports or information to manage the quality of the product. It is to ensure that the project deliverables are of sufficient quality and it makes sure to check out each process from the planning phase to the deployment phase. Here, we will discuss the following topics:
- Purpose of Quality Management Plan
- Quality Management Philosophy
- Quality Strategy
- Processes in Quality Management Plan
- Advantages of Quality Management Plan
Let’s discuss each of these topics in detail.
Purpose of Quality Management Plan
The purpose of the Quality Management Plan is to describe how the quality of the project will be managed throughout the entire lifecycle. Quality management planning determines quality policies and procedures relevant to the project for both project deliverables and project processes. This helps to define who is responsible for what type of task and documents compliance. The main purpose is to implement quality improvement to satisfy our customers.
Quality Management Philosophy
The main focus of the total quality management philosophy is to achieve a comprehensive integration among organizational staff and their functions in order to gain better enhancement, progress, and preservation of products and services quality to achieve customer satisfaction.
This managerial philosophy is directly focused on improving the business quality and satisfaction of managers through enhancing the employee’s involvement in decision-making processes by utilizing teams of quality improvements and quality circle strategies.
Quality Strategy
The main focus of the Quality Strategy is to define or apply quality standard techniques to each task for our project to deliver the quality product. This phase consists of multiple strategies and these are all carried out by team members. Team members will implement the best strategy which enhances the product with good efficiency. There are 5 strategies to improve the product:
- To build a company culture that emphasizes quality improvement.
- Design a robust training program.
- Develop a detailed quality inspection program.
- Ensure that equipment is regularly maintained.
- Schedule periodic internal audits.
Processes in Quality Management Plan Template
There are 3 processes in Quality Management Plan Template:
- Quality Planning
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
Let’s discuss these processes in detail:
1. Quality Planning: In this, identify the relevant quality standards and determine the acceptance criteria. This process includes the following activities:
- Goals and Objectives of the project
- Steps or Procedures to be carried out.
- Assigning responsibilities to teams – who should complete which task and when?
- Standards – What are the practices to be applied?
- Testing Requirements – where to test and who are all needed?
- Changing documentations – To make changes to the project schedules or something else.
- Quality process measurement – A way to measure the quality of the document itself.
Here every process is properly planned by the project manager or lead and It is all well documented.
2. Quality Assurance: Quality assurance is any systematic process of determining whether a product or service meets specified requirements. It establishes and maintains set requirements for developing or manufacturing reliable products. It is defined as the application of planned, systematic quality activities to ensure all the requirements for the products are met. The below diagram is to define the cycle of phases in Quality Assurance.
- Design: Once the quality planning is done, the design for the product will be discussed by the team and start the code implementation.
- Testing: Once the development is done for the project, the testing team will test the product with various testing techniques to ensure that all the requirements are met.
- Deployment: After testing is done successfully, the product is ready to go live in the market for real-time use for the customers.
- Support: Here, the maintenance for the software like further updates, repairs, and breaks if it occurs will be done by the maintenance team.
- Feedback: To get feedback from the customers to satisfy their needs if anything they expect. With help of the feedback, the project team will get to know about the further expectations of the customer.
Methodologies in Quality Assurance: There are two testing methods in Quality Assurance:
- Non-Functional Testing.
- Functional Testing.
A. Non-Functional Testing: Non-functional testing is the process of performing load testing, stress testing, and checking minimum system requirements which are required to meet the requirements. It will also detect risks, errors and optimize the performance of the database.
a). Load Testing:
- Load testing involves testing the performance and scalability of the database.
- It determines how the software behaves when it is been used by many users simultaneously.
- It focuses on good load management.
For example, if the web application is accessed by multiple users at the same time and it does not create any traffic problem then the load testing is successfully completed.
b). Stress Testing: Stress Testing is also known as endurance testing. Stress testing is a testing process that is performed to identify the breakpoint of the system.
- In this testing, an application is loaded till the stage the system fails.
- This point is known as a breakpoint of the database system.
- It evaluates and analyzes the software after the breakage of system failure. In case of error detection, It will display the error messages.
For example, if users enter the wrong login information then it will throw an error message.
c). Volume Testing: In which, the software is tested with a huge volume of data to check the stability of the software. This is done to identify what problems may occur with increasing volumes of data. It’s also known as flood testing. Volume tests can be used to check if there’s any data loss, warning or error messages, or data storage issues.
d). Scalability Testing: It is a type of testing which tests the software with scaling up and scaling down the number of users. A scalability test is a type of load testing that measures the applicant’s ability to scale up or down as a reaction to an increase in the number of users.
B. Functional Testing: It includes various testing services to check the system. Some of them are listed below
- Unit Testing: It is a type of software testing where individual components of the software are tested. It could be a function, procedure, etc.,
- Component Testing: It is also called module testing. In which, each component is tested individually without integrating with each other.
- Integration Testing: In which, each individual module is integrated as a group to test the software.
- Regression Testing: It is a type of testing where the product is tested again after making changes to any of the functions or modules.
- Usability Testing: It is also known as UX(User Experience) testing. In which, it measures how easy and user-friendly a web application is.
- UI/GUI Testing: In which, the front-end design part of the web application is tested such as menu bars, buttons, etc.,
- User Acceptance Testing: It is performed by the end-users or clients to check the entire software before it is introduced in real-time use.
- Application Testing: In which an application the company is developing is tested.
Quality Review: Quality Review is to check or review the entire system or product to ensure that the product is working perfectly based on our requirements. It is the process of checking the quality of product services against the quality standards. It will also indicate any actions that are still required and promote quality. Quality Review includes the reports of all processes such as quality audit reports, bug reports, internal audit reports, etc.
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Project Quality Consultants: The project quality consultants have carried out effective administrative, functional, and technical support or services to the team members. They help an organization achieve successful project outcomes in quality initiatives related to compliance, certification with quality standards, quality management systems software, training, and more. They will support their junior team members during the project to make them understand the project end to end and make them feel comfortable in that project. They also provide good motivation among their trainees.
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Project Evaluation and Review: It is the step-by-step process of collecting, recording, analyzing the information about the Project results, Short term outputs, and Long term outputs. It is to evaluate and review the output of each task or multiple tasks and to decide whether it is worth proceeding or not. During this process, we will get to know the following answers
- The current progress of the project.
- Whether we can make possible changes to make quality output.
- Changes to be implemented.
- Whether to remove any unwanted actions from the project.
- Whether the developed task is related to the requirements.
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Management of Changes to Project Scope: Changes in project scope will be raised when the client wants to make changes to their requirements which is not previously mentioned during the agreement with management. The changes may be related to delivering the project before the mentioned timeline or deadline, changes in specific tasks, changes in designs, changes in functionality, etc., All the changes will be documented.
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Impact in changing project scope:
- Cost or budget of the project.
- The risk evolution.
- The timeline of the project may not be predicted.
- The quality of the project varies.
Risk Management: Risk Management is the technique or process to identify the risk, assess and control the risks in the project. It is helpful to identify all possible defects and apply some techniques to overcome the risk. The risk could be anything like defects in the project, capital expenditure, operational expenditure, etc. Risk Management consists of Risk Assessment and Risk Analysis.
There are four steps in Risk Management:
- Identify the risk.
- Assess the risk.
- Treat the risk.
- Monitor and Report on the risk.
Risk Assessment: Risk Assessment is the process of identifying the defects or bugs and analyzing the risk which may cause harm. There are two types of risk and opportunity assessments- qualitative and quantitative.
- A qualitative assessment analyzes the level of criticality based on the event’s probability and impact.
- A quantitative assessment analyzes the financial impact or benefit of the event.
Both are necessary for a comprehensive evaluation of risks and opportunities.
Information Management: Information Management is the collection of all information from various sources and storing it under safe circumstances. It is used to collect, manage, preserve, store and deliver information. The management states how the information is stored and who will maintain that information. It is available to the right persons. The purpose of information management is to:
- Design, develop, manage, and use information with insight and innovation.
- Support decision-making and create value for individuals, organizations, communities, and societies.
The two ways to store the information are:
1. Document Management: Document Management is nothing but storing all the information in a word or related document format. It consists of all details about the project like goal, objectives, tasks divided among team members, deadlines, testing details, etc. In some organizations, they developed Document Management systems to store all the details in their software system. Here, they can easily add, modify, update and delete their details for future purposes.
Advantages of Document Management:
- Increased product and process quality.
- Consistency.
- Compliance.
- Increased safety.
- Focus on improvement.
2. Record-Keeping: Record-Keeping is nothing but managing the files or records manually or electronically. Here, the stored information will be managed by the organization. A good system for keeping business records includes capturing information, checking, recording, reviewing, and acting on the information.
In manual record-keeping, the managing of paperwork is high and more persons are required to keep track or manage the data. In an automated record-keeping system, all the data are managed easily and the manual work is less. The possibility of corruption of data is high.
Advantages of Record Keeping:
- Monitor the progress of your business.
- Prepare your financial statements.
- Identify sources of your income.
- Keep track of your deductible expenses.
- Keep track of your basis in the property.
3. Quality Control: Quality Control is defined as the inspection aspect of quality management. It is the process of referring to the activities and techniques to ensure that the developed product is in conformance with the requirements. Monitoring project results to determine compliance with quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate unsatisfactory results. Relevant methodologies and guidelines may be used to assist. These include technical specifications or other specific criteria. Each output is also determined by the needs, expectations, requirements, and critical success factors of the stakeholders.
- Output Review Procedures: Output Review Procedure consists of a sequence of review processes. Here, the process will be divided into various review processes. In the first review, they will submit only a detailed description of the project. It will be reviewed by the business client and take the first review confirmation from the client. After that, the next process will be initiated. If the client suggests any changes then it will be done by the next review. The project contains many reviews and It is totally dependent on the project size and client or management decision. Like this, each phase and the output of the phase will also be reviewed. If the client or management suggests any changes then they will be implemented and confirmed the same. If the output of that phase is accepted then the team members will be concentrated on the next phase of the project.
- Output Acceptance Procedures: It is essential that output acceptance by the business client is appropriately defined and documented. Output acceptance also includes acceptance of related ongoing management responsibilities and accountabilities. In this, it defines what processes the business client will apply to conduct a final review and acceptance of the outputs based on the agreed criteria or requirements. Once the output of the process is accepted and finalized, it will be further discussed with the client to deploy the project in the real market.
Advantages of Quality Management Plan
The following are some of the advantages of the Quality Management Plan:
- A better understanding of customer needs.
- Increased Profit.
- Greater efficiency in the quality of products and services.
- Increased Customer Satisfaction.
- Better Internal Communication.
- Improved participation of employees.