The International Organization for standardization (ISO) defines quality as “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bare on its ability to satisfy stated or implied need” (ISO, cited in Schwalbe, 2010, p.294). Project quality management aim is to guarantee that the project undertaken will fulfill the needs for which project was initiated. As an impact for globalization, consumer became more demanding for higher quality products, this made quality management a key are to address and budget for in all industries and projects. Project quality management include three main processes those are planning quality, performing quality and quality control. Quality is one of the area which require continuous improvement, this to insure that quality is always at its maximum levels to satisfy customers and project stakeholders.
To improve information technology project there are multiple suggestions that could be addressed, first could be managing quality expectations and cultural differences, second is using maturity models, and third is through promoting quality awareness and reinforcement through project and organizations leadership and top management. Because not all quality aspects could be clearly defined, and because different team members could have different expectations about project quality, it is important to understand various team member’s expectations, try to satisfy them and resolve any conflict caused by difference in expectations (Schwalbe, 2010, p.322). Another important factor that should be taken into consideration while defining project quality within project scope is cultural differences and perception of quality in different countries or between team members from different backgrounds. For example quality standards in EU differ a lot than quality standards in Middle East countries.
Second important factor to improve IT project quality is the use of maturity models, those are frameworks to help organizations improve their processes and systems (Schwalbe, 2010, p.323). Most of them consist of five levels, and there are three popular ones, one of them is Capability Maturity Model Integration, “The Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM or SW-CMM) is a reference model for appraising software process maturity and a normative model for helping software organizations progress along an evolutionary path from ad hoc, chaotic processes to mature, disciplined software processes” (Herbsleb et al., 1997). It helps in enhancing processes for a project, organization or a division within an organization, and provides guidance for quality processes (Schwalbe, 2010, 323).
The third suggestion to improve IT quality is by promoting quality to top management, or project owners. “Although initially this theory holds some truth, in the long run, leadership within the organization plays a more important role in achieving and maintaining quality” (Shiramizu & Singh, 2007). As long, as project stakeholders are quality sensitive, and promote quality among project team, this will improve project quality, as management will force team members to become quality sensitive and insure good quality projects. Many argue that main cause of quality problems is lack for leadership (Scwalbe, 2010, p.319).
Project quality management is important for project success, and continuous improvement for quality is essential to have successful projects, this improvement could be through managing expectations and cultural differences, leadership or the use of maturity models to enhance quality processes.
Reference:
Herbsleb, J. et al. (1997), Software Quality and the Capability Maturity Model, Communications of the ACM, Volume 40 Issue 6, DOI: 10.1145/255656.255692. (Accessed 7 January 2012)
Schwalbe, K., (2010), Information Technology Project Management (with Microsoft Project 2007 CD-ROM), 6th ed., Course Technology, 2010, ISBN 978-0-324-78692-7
Shiramizu, S. & Singh, A. (2007), ‘Leadership to Improve Quality within an Organization’, Leadership Manage. Eng. 7, 129 (2007); doi:10.1061/(ASCE)1532-6748(2007)7:4(129) (12 pages), [Online]. (Accessed 7 January 2012)
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