Why is Quality Planning Important in Project Management?

Business growth across domains hinges on excellent product management. And the quality of a plan largely benefits the smooth management of a product.
A quality plan is a structured document that includes the essentials of a project, from resources to workforce, and technologies to deadlines.
This article will list five reasons why quality planning is essential in project management. But before that, let’s understand what quality planning is.

What is Quality Planning?

Quality planning typically exists during the planning stage and includes the critical factors required to make a project successful. It is the cornerstone of a project’s success and helps maintain efficiency across different departments.

Why is Quality Planning Important in Project Management?

Here are some reasons why it is essential in project management:

• A well-structured quality plan helps in avoiding potential consequences of errors and defects. It allows the project managers to meet and understand the client’s requirements.
• The basic fundamental of project management and the quality plan is the same- meeting the customers’ requirements. Since both processes work towards a common goal, all the client’s needs and requirements are fulfilled, directly affecting the company’s financial situation.
• Having a quality plan helps in reducing costs. It tells the project managers precisely what the customers want and what standards they need to achieve with their activities. It makes it spend funds on things that are of importance to customers.
• A quality plan ensures that project management activities are carried out smoothly. A quality plan gives all information about the project to the team members, which helps the employees know what they are expected to do. It increases efficiency and productivity in the organisation.
• A quality plan helps the stakeholders and top-level management check the progress of a project. It (quality plan) determines the scope of what’s going to be measured and what metrics will define whether the project is successful, which makes it easy for stakeholders to analyse the performance of a project.

What are the Top-Quality Planning Tools?

Here are some popular quality planning tools that are predominantly used across various industries:

Flowchart:

An easy way to logically understand and prepare a quality plan is to use flowcharts. They are powerful tools that use shapes and letters that outline the logical steps to complete a process.

Check sheets:

It is a simple process of organising information in a format that makes it easy to gather data during the inspection or quality check.

Scatter Diagram:

A graph showcases the relationship between two variables. This quality planning and management tool can identify problems and find solutions.

What are the Popular Quality Planning Techniques?

Below we have listed some of the famous quality planning techniques.

Brainstorming:

It is a technique for gathering information where multiple ideas and inputs are captured for later analysis and decision-making. The main objective of brainstorming is to produce innovative, novel, and creative ideas. By using brainstorming, businesses can identify quality loopholes and develop a unique quality plan that helps the company get a competitive advantage.

Nominal Group Technique:

It is an enhancement of brainstorming that adds mechanisms for ranking ideas. It assumes that a minor group will produce better results than a group engaging in traditional brainstorming. NGT collects anonymous inputs from group members and encourages discussion of all information. Then each member prioritises the input items. The items are further prioritised based on their cumulative score.

Cost-of-quality:

It is a modern concept used in modern quality management to refer to the total costs associated with ensuring that the project meets its requirement. It helps in preventing mistakes from happening and reduces costs.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the benefits of a quality plan?

Quality planning takes place at the commencement of a project. That’s why it helps in planning projects carefully, keeping in mind the requirement and quality standards of clients. Here are some of the benefits of a quality plan:

• It brings together people from different departments with diverse skillset in a project
• It separates the critical elements of a project into two categories- operation and strategy
• It acts as a roadmap to follow for each department. Simply put, it provides guidance and direction to everyone associated with a quality plan
• It provides specific metrics that help in tracking the progress of the project

What should a quality plan have?

A quality plan describes the quality methodology, standards, activities, expectations, tools, and resources needed to execute a project successfully. Here are the main components of a quality plan:

• Details about the deliverables
• Quality standards of the deliverables
• Customer satisfaction
• Quality control
• Stakeholder’s expectations
• Quality assurance

What is a quality planning process?

Quality planning is a structured process for developing products that incorporate the demands and needs of the customers.
Typically, a quality planning process includes the following steps:

• Project establishment
• Customer identification
• Discovering customer needs
• Product development
• Process development
• Control transfer

Which industries do quality plans help the most?

Quality plans are becoming increasingly popular across various industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare, food service, education, and retail.
Furthermore, it is used to improve efficiency and productivity in areas like:

• Product design
• Product development
• Manufacturing
• Packaging
• Content marketing

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, the success of a business is dependent on a well-designed and executed project plan. Quality planning helps ensure that every project meets the client’s demands. However, inaccurate forecasts of project time, cost, and resources can affect the success of a project. Additionally, the proliferation of digital technology has accelerated change and forced project managers to rethink their planning skills.

Emeritus India offers an array of advanced courses in project management designed to help you understand project management concepts and principles. Moreover, introduce you to tools and techniques used in modern project management.

We have partnered with renowned universities to offer these courses. Enrolling in our learning programmes will equip you with robust planning ability, and the capacity to set clear goals.