PQM Overview

A project and quality manager is the person accountable for accomplishing the stated project objectives.
Key project and quality management responsibilities include creating clear and attainable project objectives, building the project requirements, and managing the triple constraint for projects, which is cost, time, and scope.
A project and quality manager is often a client representative and has to determine and implement the exact needs of the client, based on knowledge of the firm they are representing.
The ability to adapt to the various internal procedures of the contracting party, and to form close links with the nominated representatives, is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost, time, quality and above all, client satisfaction, can be realized.
The ability to understand the key issues-technical issues, commercial issues, are the strength that project and quality manager should possess.

Project and quality management

Project and quality management is quite often the province and responsibility of an individual project & quality manager.
This individual seldom participates directly in the activities that produce the end result, but rather strives to maintain the progress and productive mutual interaction of various parties in such a way that overall risk of failure is reduced.

Products and services

Any type of product or service --pharmaceuticals, building construction, vehicles, electronics, computer software, financial services, etc. -- may have its implementation overseen by a project and quality manager and its operations by a product manager.

Project tools

The tools, knowledge and techniques for managing projects are often unique to Project and quality management.
For example: work breakdown structures, critical path analysis and earned value management.
Understanding and applying the tools and techniques which are generally recognized as good practices are not sufficient alone for effective project and quality management.
Effective project and quality management requires that the project & quality manager understands and uses the knowledge and skills from at least four areas of expertise.

Project teams

When recruiting and building an effective team, the manager must consider not only the technical skills of each person, but also the critical roles and chemistry between workers.
A project team has mainly three separate components: Project and Quality Manager, Core Team and Contracted Team.

Risk

Most of the project and quality management issues that influence a project arise from risk, which in turn arises from uncertainty.
The successful project and quality manager focuses on this as his/her main concern and attempts to reduce risk significantly, often by adhering to a policy of open communication, ensuring that project participants can voice their opinions and concerns.

Types of project and quality managers

Construction Project and Quality Manager
Architectural Project and Quality Manager
An architect will often work closely with the construction project and quality manager in the office of the General contractor (GC), and at the same time, coordinate the work of the design team and numerous consultants who contribute to a construction project, and manage communication with the client.
The issues of budget, scheduling, and quality-control are the responsibility of the project and quality manager in an architect's office.
Software Project and Quality Manager
Software project and quality Manager are responsible not only for implementing a successful development model, but also for seeing that each phase of development is successful.

Education, certifications and networks

Individuals wishing to obtain professional certifications may take one or more of the offerings available from a variety of organizations.

History of project & quality management

As a discipline, project and quality management developed from different fields of application including construction, engineering and defense. In the United States, the two forefathers of project and quality management are Henry Gantt, called the father of planning and control techniques, which are famously known for his use of the Gantt chart as a project and quality management tool. Henry Fayol for his creation of the 6 management functions, which form the basis for the body of knowledge associated with project and program management.

Project and quality management approaches

The traditional approach
A traditional phased approach identifies a sequence of steps to be completed. In the "traditional approach", we can distinguish 5 components of a project (4 stages plus control) in the development of a project:
Critical Chain Project and Quality Management
Critical Chain Project and Quality Management (CCPQM) is a method of planning and managing projects that puts more emphasis on the resources required to execute project tasks. It is an application of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to projects.
Extreme Project and Quality Management
In critical studies of project and quality management, it has been noted that several of these fundamentally PERT-based models are not well suited for the multi-project company environment of today.
Most of them are aimed at very large-scale, one-time, non-routine projects, and nowadays all kinds of management are expressed in terms of projects.
PRINCE2
PRINCE2 is a structured approach to project and quality management, released in 1996 as a generic project and quality management method. It provides a method for managing projects within a clearly defined framework. PRINCE2 describes procedures to coordinate people and activities in a project, how to design and supervise the project, and what to do if the project has to be adjusted if it does not develop as planned.

Process-based management

Also furthering the concept of project and quality control is the incorporation of process-based management.
This area has been driven by the use of maturity models such as the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) and
ISO/IEC15504 (SPICE - Software process Improvement and capability Determination), which have been far more successful.

Rational Unified Process

Inception - Identify the initial scope of the project, a potential architecture for the system, and obtain initial project funding and stakeholder acceptance.
Elaboration - Prove the architecture of the system.
Construction - Build working software on a regular, incremental basis which meets the highest-priority needs of project stakeholders.
Transition - Validate and deploy the system into the production environment

Monitoring and Controlling

Monitoring and controlling consists of those processes performed to observe project execution so that potential problems can be identified in a timely manner and corrective action can be taken, when necessary, to control the execution of the project. The key benefit is that project performance is observed and measured regularly to identify variances from the project and quality management plan.
Project and quality maintenance is an ongoing process, and it includes:
Continuing support of end users
Correction of errors
Updates of the software over time

Work Breakdown Structure

The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a tree structure, which shows a subdivision of effort required to achieve an objective; for example a program, project, and contract. The WBS may show hardware, product, service, or process oriented. In a project of contract, the WBS is developed by starting with:
the end objective and successively subdividing it into manageable components
in terms of size, duration, and responsibility (e.g., systems, subsystems, components, tasks, subtasks, and work packages) which include all steps necessary to achieve the objective.

Project and Quality Management Framework

The Program (Investment) Life Cycle integrates the project and quality management and system development life cycles with the activities directly associated with system deployment and operation. By design, system operation management and related activities occur after the project is complete and are not documented within this guide.
Project control variables