Quality, Resource, and Communications Management
What the exam tests
Quality, resource, and communications: quality versus grade, prevention over inspection, team development and conflict, and channel arithmetic and methods.
Quality
Quality is fitness for purpose and conformance to requirements; grade is a category of technical features. Low grade may be acceptable; low quality is not. Manage Quality (QA) is process-focused and preventive; Control Quality (QC) inspects outputs. Cost of quality: prevention and appraisal are investments; internal and external failures are costs of nonconformance, with external failure most expensive. Seven basic tools include cause-and-effect diagrams, flowcharts, check sheets, Pareto charts, histograms, control charts, and scatter diagrams. Seven consecutive points on one side of the mean signals a non-random cause.
Resources and communication
- RACI: one accountable person per task; several can be consulted or informed.
- Tuckman: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning; conflict is normal at storming.
- Conflict handling: collaborate/problem-solve is generally preferred; forcing, avoiding, accommodating, and compromising are situational.
- Communication channels = n(n − 1)/2, where n includes the project manager.
- Methods: interactive (most effective for complex or ambiguous messages), push, pull.
Worked example
A team of 10 plus the PM has 11 × 10/2 = 55 channels. Adding two specialists makes n = 13, giving 13 × 12/2 = 78 channels, an increase of 23. Growth is quadratic, so the communications plan must scale, not merely add two names to a distribution list.
Traps
- Treating QA and QC as interchangeable.
- Relying on inspection as the primary quality strategy; prevention is cheaper.
- Reacting to a single outlier without checking control limits and rules.
- Choosing push communication for a sensitive, ambiguous message that needs dialogue.