Quality Plan Items

Worksheet 33. Quality Plan Items

Quality Plan Quality Plan Item

Means of

Report

Frequency

Reference Quality Issues: open,

closed, % closed per

report, c

week or month, new

chart

issues per week or month DPMO vs. a checklist

c chart

of criteria Quality judgments on

Written

intermediate project

report

deliverables by someone qualified to make the judgments (must be defined operationally) Project satisfaction

p chart of %

survey results:

giving high

sponsors, customers,

or low

team members, others

ratings, X- bar/s chart of scored items

Intermediate

Written

improvement of key

report,

business metrics to

descriptive

date vs. baseline—e.g.,

statistics

reduced defect rates, improved process time, increased customer satisfaction with product or service quality, reduced costs, improved process capability Results of WBS

Written

reintegration tests

report

Project change

Change

requests

control plan

Quality Plan Quality Plan Item

Means of

Report

Frequency

Monitoring

Distribution

Reference

Cost Control Plan * The project manager must know where he or she stands in terms of expenditures. Once

the manager is informed that a given amount of future expense is allocated to him or her for a particular project, it is his or her job to run the project so that this allowance is not exceeded. The process of allocating resources to be expended in the future is called budgeting. Budgets should be viewed as forecasts of future events; in this case, the events are expenditures. A listing of these expenditures, broken out into specific categories, is called the budget. Project budgets are commonly prepared for the following categories of expenses:

• Direct labor budgets are usually prepared for each work element in the project

plan, then aggregated for the project as a whole. Control is usually maintained at the work element level to ensure that the aggregate budget allowance is not exceeded. Budgets may be in terms of dollars or some other measure of value, such as direct labor hours expended.

services tend to charge based on actuals, without allowances for errors, rework, FL

• Support services budgets need to be prepared, because without budgets support

• Purchased items budgets covers purchased materials, equipment, and services. The AM

etc. The discipline imposed by making budget estimates and being held to them often leads to improved efficiency and higher quality.

budgets can be based on negotiated or market prices. The issues mentioned for support services also apply here.

TE

Budget Reports Budgets allocate resources to be used in the future. No one can predict the future with

certainty. Thus, an important element in the budgeting process is tracking actual expenditures after the budgets have been prepared. The following techniques are useful in monitoring actual expenditures vs. budgeted expenditures.

• Expenditure reports that compare actual expenditures with budgeted expenditures

are periodically submitted to the budget authority, e.g., finance, sponsor. • Expenditure audits are conducted to verify that charges to the project are

legitimate and that the work charged for was actually performed. In most large organizations with multiple projects in work at any given time, it is possible to find projects being charged for work done on other projects, for work not yet done, etc. While these charges are often inadvertent, in fairness to the various sponsors they must still be identified and controlled.

• Variance reporting compares actual expenditures with budgeted expenditures

directly. The term variance is used here in the accounting sense, not the statistical sense. In accounting, a variance is simply a comparison of a planned amount

* Part of the official project plan.

Team-Fly 84 Team-Fly 84

• Variance tables: Variance reports can appear in a variety of formats. Most common are simple tables that show the actual/budgeted/variances by budget item and overall for the current period and cumulatively for the project. Since it is unlikely that variances will be zero, an allowance is usually made, e.g., 5% over or under is allowed without the need for explanations.

• Control charts: For longer projects, historical actuals can be plotted on control charts and used to set allowances.

• Variance graphs: When only tables are used, it is difficult to spot patterns. To remedy this problem, tables are often supplemented with graphs. Graphs generally show the budget variances in a time-ordered sequence on a line chart. The allowance lines calculated from control charts can be drawn on the graph to provide a visual guide to the eye.