8.2 Perform Quality Assurance

The Perform Quality Assurance process is monitoring documenting and steering project deliverable to meet quality standards identified in the project management and quality management plans.  This process is critical to meeting he implied purpose of the project.  Any time anything is accomplished it's with the understanding that certain level of quality is required for the process to be meaningful. Those levels of quality are established in these plans and must be managed to achieve the projects intent as understood by the stakeholder.  The Inputs, Tool & Techniques and Outputs for this process are listed in figure 29 below.

Figure 29. Perform Qulality Assurance: Inputs, Tools & Techniques, and Outputs. Reprinted from "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 5th Edition" by Project Management Institute, 2013, p.243. Copyright 2013 by Project Management Institute, Inc. Reprinted without permission.

Process Definition

The quality assurance process affects a set of standards, plans and actions to guide project practices to meet project deliverables to a specified quality standards.  These actions are to instill levels of confidence in project outcomes and provide a foundation for overall achievement of project goals.  The intent is to identify process and or deliverable defects, poor performance, or askew outcomes at the earliest point and facilitate corrections to maintain project integrity, schedule and cost.  This is accomplished by reports, inspections, data analysis and comparison to the standards identified in the project and quality management plans, then facilitating agreed on corrective actions.

Process Assessment

This process provides oversight on the project outcomes and assist in meeting the intended goals of the project or as discussed the implied quality outcomes for the project. It is also iterative and continues through every stage of the project.  To include, if needed, a revisit of the planning processes. Each iteration is to improve effectiveness and efficiency of the project as well as overall quality of deliverable products. 

Artifacts

Input

The input artifact below Crossfit Inc Quality Plan was developed in PMGT532 to evaluate the business practices if the Crossfit franchise and evaluate  their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and provide feed back for how to improve their business performance. it is applicable to this process in that it provided a quality audit inputs to work from.  see 8.2.1

Tools & Techniques

I chose to use two tools and techniques for artifacts in this section.  First from PMGT612 is an evaluation of the perform quality assurance processes from global perspective and from the view of taken on a failing project.  The second is from PMGT532 as case study based on surveys received for First Internet Bank (FIR) We were given limited statistical data only a few bits of information and were asked to glean results from this small sample.  The evaluation provides input based on a small quality audit. see 8.2.2

Output

The outputs for this process are similar to other iterative processes that being updating existing plans and documents.  For the purpose of this portfolio and with the limitation of number of time we can use products, I find it repetitive and unproductive to include anything for this artifact.  see 8.2.3