All you have to do is just type “BLOOD and send SMS to 96000 97000” (in India )

EX: “BLOOD B+”

A BLOOD DONOR WILL CALL YOU!!

So please pass this message to all. It certainly would save many lives.

It’s a Must to Know & Share. Do it now….

Forward this to all your friends whom you care ….as the minute you spare to share this information can save somebody’s life with rare Blood Group!

Nowadays every organization is looking at ”Quality” product/services/outcomes for anything that they do or pay for. Here we will know about what is “Quality”, how it needs to be maintained /achieved and factors related to it.

Definition of Quality –

General – Degree to the extent inherent characteristics of product or service meet the requirements.

As per Six Sigma – State in which value entitlement is realized for the customer as well as for the provider in every aspect of the business relationships covering the entire supply chain. Its WIN-WIN approach for everyone involved.

It is important to understand client’s requirement and convert them into clear & precise requirement/technical specifications. This is the initial step and it highly affects the most to the quality of the product/services as if there is any misunderstanding or ambiguity in specs, it is certain the final output woud have issues and it will require rework. There is a process called “Quality Function Deployment / QFD – Process of translating Voice of Customer into requirement/technical specification” and it’s require to adopt this process to ensure quality outcomes. E.g. For any kind of project, when customer sends initial requirements through email/document and later the same get discussed during call etc need to be converted into proper document that will help team to know/understand actual client requirements to work further.

Once customer need is properly translated into requirement/technical specification, it’s required to know items that are “Critical To Quality / CTQ”. CTQ is parametric representation of the voice of customer and it’s bridge between Customer Satisfaction and Process Output. Additional reviews & checks are required for items that come under CTQ. E.g. When we are working on project, it’s important to know items that are “must” or “absolutely required” to ensure customer satisfaction or product/project/service quality. Mainly, such items could be the core functionality of the product/project/service. Sometimes though everything is implemented properly but if specific/core functionality that client expected is not working properly, it could spoil overall quality. So Project Lead/Manager needs to identify such items and ensure that they are implemented as expected.

Many times, organization / management would think that how “Cost of Quality” can be figured out. Here is some insight about cost of quality,

Cost of Quality – Cost associated with maintaining the same level of quality and preventing shortcomings.

1. Cost of Good Quality / Conformance to requirements

a. Prevention Cost – Cost of preventing mistakes in producing the product to begin with. E.g. Creating quality check-lists and following it at every level of execution.

b. Appraisal/Inspection Cost – Cost spent to examine the product and make recommendations. E.g. Quality checks/reviews by senior execs/Leads

2. Cost of Poor Quality / Non-conformance to requirements – When things do not go accordingly to the plan and it requires rework.

a. Internal Failure Cost – Cost associated to fix the issues that are found during internal inspection. It’s cost depends on the phase during which the issue has found and how much rework is required. E.g. Issues found during review

b. External Failure Cost – Cost associated to fix the issues that are found at client site. This certainly costs more. E.g. Issues found during client review / user acceptance testing

So it’s preferred to set following processes to achieve/maintaint quality for each product/project/service,

1. Quality Planning – Identify which quality standards are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them. Here are important tools/output of this process,

a. Quality Management Plan – Describe how Project Management Team will implement the organization’s quality policy

b. Quality Metrics – Operational definition that describes what is being measured and how it will be measured by Quality Control Process

c. Quality Checklists – Structured tool, usually component specific. It is used to verify that set of required steps that are going to be performed

d. Quality Baseline – Document the quality objectives of the project, basis for measuring and reporting performance as part of the performance measurement baseline

2. Perform Quality Assurance – Application of planned, systematic quality activities to ensure/provide confidence/assurance that the project will employ all processes needed to meet requirement. Here are important tools/output of this process,

a. Quality Audits – Structured, independent review to determine whether project activities comply with organization and project policies, processes and procedures. Objective is to identify inefficient, ineffective policies, processes and procedures. It can be scheduled or unscheduled, caried out by trained auditors of organization or 3rd party.

3. Perform Quality Control – Involves monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory results.

Here is some more definitions & comparisions for items related to quality and important to know,

1. Quality Vs Grade – Grade is rank or category and it’s required to measure features of the product. Low grade means fewer features. Low Quality is always a problem while low grade is NOT. E.g. If there are 10 features to be implemented in system. If we implement 8 features correctly than it means we are giving low grade system. And this could be okay instead of providing all 10 features with issues in them as low quality system. We can certainly implement rest of 2 items as per new schedule with 100% quality.

2. Precision Vs Accuracy – Precision is the consistency that the values of repeated measurement are clustered and little scatter. Accuracy is the correctness that the value is close to real value. E.g. A team is getting approximately 2 external failures in each of the project. As such this has been regular; one can say this is team’s precision/consistency level. But other way around, the team is not doing acrurate/correct work as 2 externail failures mean bad quality and customer dissatisfaction. So Management needs to work to find out the issue and ensure team is working more accurately/correctly so there are no external failures and then team needs to be consistent with the same outcomes.

Who is Responsible for Quality?

• Project Manager > Overall quality of project
• Project Team > Quality Deliverables. Project Team must follow the standards
• Stakeholders/Client/Engineer > Setting up test specifications

Six Sigma and Project Management Institute have shown ways to achieve/maintain quality services/product/project/results by following set of processes and they are main source of above information. However, the relevant information is clustered together and represented differently for easy understanding.