ISO 21502:2020 Clause 7.11.4 Controlling quality

Quality control should be used to:

1. determine whether the project’s objectives, quality requirements, quality metrics and standards are being met;
2. identify causes of and ways to eliminate unsatisfactory performance.

Quality control should consider progress data, deliverables and the defined management approach for quality, as well as results in quality control measurements, verified deliverables and inspection reports. The results should help identify causes of poor performance or inadequate product quality, and can lead to preventive and corrective actions and change requests.
Quality control should be applied to the project’s deliverables and outputs, and includes such activities as:

• verifying that the deliverables and outputs meet the quality requirements by detecting defects using the established tools, procedures and techniques;
• analysing possible causes of defects;
• determining the preventive actions and change requests;
• communicating the corrective actions and change requests.

Quality control can be performed outside the project boundaries by other parts of the performing organization or by the customers.

Controlling quality in a project involves monitoring and managing processes to ensure that project deliverables meet defined quality standards and requirements. Here’s how a project organization can control quality effectively:

1. Establish Clear Quality Standards: Define clear and measurable quality standards and requirements for project deliverables. These standards should be aligned with stakeholder expectations, industry best practices, and project objectives. Clearly communicate these standards to all project team members and stakeholders.
2. Implement Quality Control Processes: Develop and implement quality control processes and procedures to monitor and evaluate project activities, processes, and deliverables throughout the project lifecycle. These processes should include methods for inspecting, testing, and verifying project work against established quality criteria.
3. Conduct Inspections and Reviews: Regularly conduct inspections, reviews, and audits of project processes and deliverables to identify any deviations from quality standards or requirements. Inspections may involve formal reviews, walkthroughs, or informal checklists to ensure compliance with quality criteria.
4. Use Quality Assurance Tools and Techniques: Utilize quality assurance tools and techniques to measure, analyze, and improve project quality. These tools may include statistical process control, quality checklists, cause-and-effect diagrams, Pareto analysis, and control charts. Apply these tools systematically to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement.
5. Implement Continuous Improvement Practices: Foster a culture of continuous improvement within the project team by encouraging feedback, learning from past experiences, and implementing corrective and preventive actions to address quality issues. Regularly review and update quality processes and standards based on lessons learned and evolving project requirements.
6. Provide Training and Support: Ensure that project team members have the necessary skills, knowledge, and resources to meet quality standards and requirements. Provide training and support to enhance their understanding of quality management principles, tools, and techniques. Encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing among team members to improve overall project quality.
7. Empower Quality Champions: Designate individuals or teams as quality champions who are responsible for championing quality initiatives, promoting adherence to quality standards, and driving continuous improvement efforts. Empower these champions to identify quality issues, propose solutions, and lead quality improvement projects within the organization.
8. Monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Define and monitor key performance indicators related to quality, such as defect rates, rework levels, customer satisfaction scores, and adherence to schedule and budget. Use these KPIs to track project quality performance, identify trends, and take timely corrective actions to address any deviations from expected quality levels.
9. Ensure Supplier and Vendor Quality: If the project involves external suppliers or vendors, establish quality requirements and expectations in contracts and agreements. Monitor supplier performance and conduct quality assessments to ensure that external deliverables meet project quality standards and specifications.
10. Enforce Change Management Processes: Integrate change management processes with quality control processes to ensure that any changes to project scope, requirements, or deliverables are properly assessed, approved, and implemented. Avoid unauthorized changes that may compromise project quality or introduce unnecessary risks.

By implementing these quality control measures systematically throughout the project lifecycle, the project organization can effectively monitor, manage, and improve project quality, ultimately delivering successful outcomes and meeting stakeholder expectations.

Quality control should be used to determine whether the project’s objectives, quality requirements, quality metrics and standards are being met.

Quality control plays a crucial role in ensuring that the project’s objectives, quality requirements, metrics, and standards are being met. Here’s how quality control helps in achieving this:

1. Objective Evaluation: Quality control involves objective evaluation of project deliverables, processes, and outcomes against predefined quality requirements, metrics, and standards. This helps in assessing whether the project is progressing as planned and meeting its objectives.
2. Verification of Quality Requirements: Quality control verifies whether the project deliverables adhere to the specified quality requirements. It ensures that the final products or services meet the agreed-upon standards and specifications set by stakeholders.
3. Identification of Non-Conformities: Quality control helps in identifying any non-conformities or deviations from the quality standards and requirements. By detecting these issues early, corrective actions can be taken to address them before they escalate and impact project outcomes.
4. Continuous Monitoring: Quality control involves continuous monitoring of project activities, processes, and outputs to ensure consistency and compliance with quality standards. Regular inspections, reviews, and audits are conducted to detect any deviations and ensure timely corrective actions.
5. Data-Driven Decision Making: Quality control relies on data-driven decision making, where objective metrics and performance indicators are used to assess the quality of project deliverables. This enables project managers to make informed decisions and take proactive measures to maintain or improve quality.
6. Feedback Loop: Quality control establishes a feedback loop between project stakeholders, enabling them to provide input and feedback on the quality of deliverables and processes. This fosters collaboration and communication, leading to continuous improvement in project quality.
7. Risk Mitigation: By identifying and addressing quality issues early through quality control processes, the project organization can mitigate risks associated with poor quality, rework, delays, and customer dissatisfaction. This helps in minimizing project disruptions and ensuring smooth progress towards project objectives.
8. Compliance with Standards: Quality control ensures compliance with relevant quality standards, regulations, and industry best practices. By adhering to these standards, the project organization demonstrates its commitment to delivering high-quality outcomes that meet or exceed stakeholder expectations.

Overall, quality control serves as a critical mechanism for assessing, monitoring, and improving the quality of project deliverables and processes throughout the project lifecycle. By incorporating robust quality control practices, project organizations can enhance their ability to achieve project success and deliver value to stakeholders.

Quality control should be used to identify causes of and ways to eliminate unsatisfactory performance.

Identifying the causes of unsatisfactory performance is a crucial aspect of quality control. Here’s how quality control helps in this regard:

1. Root Cause Analysis: Quality control techniques such as root cause analysis are employed to identify the underlying reasons for unsatisfactory performance. By digging deep into the processes, systems, and factors contributing to the issue, project teams can uncover the root causes that need to be addressed.
2. Data Analysis: Quality control involves analyzing data related to performance metrics, defects, errors, and customer feedback to pinpoint the causes of unsatisfactory performance. Patterns, trends, and correlations in the data can provide valuable insights into where and why performance is falling short of expectations.
3. Process Improvement: Once the causes of unsatisfactory performance are identified, quality control facilitates the implementation of process improvements and corrective actions to eliminate or mitigate these causes. This may involve revising procedures, updating workflows, enhancing training programs, or optimizing resource allocation to address the underlying issues.
4. Continuous Monitoring: Quality control ensures that performance is continuously monitored to track the effectiveness of corrective actions and improvements implemented. By closely monitoring performance indicators, project teams can determine whether the identified causes have been adequately addressed and whether performance has improved as a result.
5. Feedback Mechanisms: Quality control establishes feedback mechanisms to gather input from stakeholders, including team members, customers, and end-users, regarding areas of unsatisfactory performance. This feedback can provide valuable insights into user experience, usability issues, product defects, or service deficiencies that need to be addressed.
6. Benchmarking: Quality control may involve benchmarking performance against industry standards, best practices, or competitors to identify gaps and areas for improvement. By comparing performance metrics with established benchmarks, project teams can identify opportunities to enhance performance and eliminate sources of unsatisfactory performance.
7. Risk Mitigation: Quality control helps in mitigating the risks associated with unsatisfactory performance by proactively addressing underlying causes before they escalate into larger issues. By taking prompt action to eliminate or mitigate the root causes of poor performance, project teams can minimize the impact on project outcomes and ensure the successful delivery of quality deliverables.

In essence, quality control serves as a proactive mechanism for identifying, analyzing, and addressing the causes of unsatisfactory performance, thereby promoting continuous improvement and ensuring the overall success of the project.

Quality control should consider progress data, deliverables and the defined management approach for quality, as well as results in quality control measurements, verified deliverables and inspection reports.

Incorporating progress data, deliverables, and the defined management approach for quality into quality control processes is crucial for ensuring that project objectives and quality requirements are met. Here’s how these elements contribute to effective quality control:

1. Progress Data: Tracking and analyzing progress data, including key performance indicators (KPIs), allows project teams to assess the current state of the project and identify any deviations from the planned schedule, budget, or quality standards. By comparing actual progress against the planned targets, teams can detect potential quality issues early and take corrective actions to address them.
2. Deliverables: Quality control involves evaluating the quality of project deliverables to ensure they meet predefined quality criteria and specifications. This assessment includes inspecting deliverables for defects, errors, or deviations from requirements, as well as verifying that they align with stakeholder expectations and acceptance criteria. By thoroughly reviewing deliverables, project teams can identify and rectify any quality issues before they impact project outcomes.
3. Defined Management Approach for Quality: Adhering to the defined management approach for quality ensures consistency and alignment with project objectives and quality standards. This approach encompasses the strategies, processes, procedures, and roles/responsibilities established to manage and control quality throughout the project lifecycle. By following the prescribed quality management framework, teams can maintain a systematic and structured approach to quality control, facilitating effective decision-making and problem-solving.
4. Quality Control Measurements: Implementing quality control measurements involves monitoring and evaluating the results of quality control activities to assess their effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. This includes analyzing inspection reports, test results, audit findings, and other quality metrics to gauge the performance of project deliverables and processes. By leveraging quality control measurements, teams can identify trends, patterns, or anomalies that may indicate underlying quality issues and take corrective actions accordingly.
5. Verified Deliverables: Verified deliverables refer to project outputs that have undergone quality control checks and have been confirmed to meet the specified quality standards and requirements. These deliverables are deemed acceptable for further use or integration into subsequent project activities. By ensuring the verification of deliverables through rigorous quality control processes, teams can minimize the risk of delivering subpar or defective outputs to stakeholders.
6. Inspection Reports: Inspection reports document the findings of quality inspections, audits, or reviews conducted to assess the conformity of project deliverables and processes with quality criteria. These reports provide detailed insights into the identified quality issues, their root causes, and recommended corrective actions. By analyzing inspection reports, project teams can prioritize and address quality issues systematically, improving overall project quality and performance.

By incorporating progress data, deliverables, defined management approaches for quality, quality control measurements, verified deliverables, and inspection reports into quality control processes, project teams can effectively monitor, evaluate, and improve project quality throughout the project lifecycle, ultimately enhancing stakeholder satisfaction and achieving project success.

The results should help identify causes of poor performance or inadequate product quality, and can lead to preventive and corrective actions and change requests.

Analyzing the results of quality control activities can provide valuable insights into the root causes of poor performance or inadequate product quality. By identifying these underlying factors, project teams can take appropriate preventive and corrective actions to address them effectively. These actions may include process improvements, training initiatives, resource reallocation, or adjustments to project plans or specifications. Moreover, when quality control activities reveal significant deviations from expected quality standards or requirements, project teams may initiate change requests to formally address these issues. Change requests may involve revising project plans, adjusting quality criteria, allocating additional resources, or implementing alternative approaches to ensure that quality objectives are met. Overall, the results of quality control activities serve as a foundation for continuous improvement and help project teams enhance project quality, minimize risks, and optimize project outcomes. By leveraging these insights, teams can proactively manage quality throughout the project lifecycle and deliver products or services that meet or exceed stakeholder expectations.

Quality control should be applied to the project’s deliverables and outputs.

Quality control is essential for ensuring that project deliverables and outputs meet the specified quality requirements and standards. By systematically assessing these deliverables against established quality criteria, project teams can identify any deviations, defects, or deficiencies that may impact the overall quality of the project. Quality control activities typically involve inspections, reviews, tests, or other evaluation methods to verify the conformance of deliverables to quality standards and requirements. These activities may be conducted at various stages of the project lifecycle, from the initial development phase to the final delivery phase, to ensure that quality is maintained throughout the project. By applying quality control to project deliverables and outputs, project teams can detect and rectify any quality issues promptly, thereby minimizing the risk of delivering substandard results. This helps enhance stakeholder satisfaction, build trust, and ultimately contribute to the success of the project.

Quality Control includes verifying that the deliverables and outputs meet the quality requirements by detecting defects using the established tools, procedures and techniques.

Verifying that deliverables and outputs meet quality requirements involves detecting defects or deviations from established standards using appropriate tools, procedures, and techniques. These tools and procedures may include inspections, tests, reviews, audits, or other evaluation methods tailored to the specific characteristics of the deliverables. During quality control activities, project teams systematically examine the deliverables to ensure they adhere to the predefined quality criteria and specifications. Any identified defects, deviations, or non-conformities are documented and analyzed to determine their root causes. This analysis enables project teams to implement corrective or preventive actions to address the issues and improve overall quality. By diligently verifying the quality of deliverables through quality control processes, project teams can ensure that the final outputs meet or exceed stakeholder expectations and quality standards. This helps mitigate risks, enhance project outcomes, and build confidence among project stakeholders.

Quality Control includes analyzing possible causes of defects.

Analyzing possible causes of defects is a fundamental aspect of quality control. When defects or deviations from quality standards are identified during quality control activities, it’s essential to investigate the root causes behind them. This analysis aims to understand why the defects occurred and to address the underlying issues to prevent similar occurrences in the future. The analysis of possible causes of defects involves examining various factors that could contribute to the observed deviations. These factors may include:

1. Process issues: Assessing whether there are flaws or inefficiencies in the processes used to produce the deliverables. This could involve examining the workflow, procedures, tools, and resources utilized during the project execution.
2. Human error: Investigating whether errors or mistakes made by individuals involved in the project contributed to the defects. This could involve assessing factors such as skill levels, training, communication, and adherence to procedures.
3. Material or resource issues: Evaluating whether issues related to materials, equipment, or other resources used in the project could have led to defects. This could include assessing the quality of materials, availability of resources, and adequacy of equipment.
4. Environmental factors: Considering external factors such as environmental conditions or external dependencies that may have influenced the quality of deliverables. This could include factors like weather conditions, regulatory changes, or supplier issues.

By thoroughly analyzing the possible causes of defects, project teams can gain insights into areas for improvement and take corrective actions to address underlying issues. This proactive approach helps enhance overall quality, mitigate risks, and improve project outcomes.

Quality Control includes determining the preventive actions and change requests.

Determining preventive actions and change requests is a crucial part of quality control. When quality issues or deviations from standards are identified during quality control activities, it’s essential to take proactive steps to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future and to address any necessary changes to improve quality. Preventive actions are measures taken to avoid the occurrence of defects or deviations from quality standards in the future. These actions aim to identify and address potential risks or issues before they impact the project. Preventive actions may include:

1. Process improvements: Implementing changes to project processes to make them more efficient, effective, or robust. This could involve refining procedures, enhancing training programs, or introducing new tools or technologies.
2. Risk mitigation measures: Taking proactive steps to mitigate known risks or anticipate potential risks that could impact quality. This could involve implementing additional controls, contingency plans, or risk avoidance strategies.
3. Quality assurance activities: Strengthening quality assurance processes to ensure that quality standards are consistently met throughout the project lifecycle. This could involve enhancing monitoring and auditing procedures, conducting regular reviews, or reinforcing quality management practices.

Change requests may also arise from quality control activities when it is determined that adjustments to project deliverables, processes, or requirements are necessary to address quality issues or deviations. Change requests may include requests for corrective actions to address existing defects or requests for preventive actions to avoid future quality issues. By determining preventive actions and change requests based on quality control findings, project teams can proactively manage quality and ensure that project deliverables meet or exceed stakeholders’ expectations. This proactive approach helps minimize risks, enhance customer satisfaction, and improve overall project outcomes.

Quality Control includes communicating the corrective actions and change requests.

Communication is a vital component of quality control processes. Once corrective actions and change requests have been identified as a result of quality control activities, it’s essential to communicate them effectively to relevant stakeholders. This ensures that everyone involved is aware of the actions being taken to address quality issues and deviations from standards, fostering transparency and accountability within the project. Effective communication of corrective actions and change requests involves:

1. Clear Documentation: Ensure that all corrective actions and change requests are documented accurately and comprehensively. This includes detailing the nature of the issue, the proposed solution, the rationale behind the action, and any associated impacts on the project.
2. Timely Notification: Communicate corrective actions and change requests in a timely manner to ensure that stakeholders are promptly informed of quality issues and the steps being taken to address them. Timely notification allows stakeholders to provide input, ask questions, or raise concerns as needed.
3. Stakeholder Engagement: Engage relevant stakeholders in the communication process to ensure that the information is disseminated to the appropriate individuals or groups. This may include project team members, clients, sponsors, suppliers, and other key stakeholders who may be impacted by the proposed actions.
4. Clarity and Transparency: Ensure that communications are clear, concise, and easy to understand. Use plain language and avoid technical jargon or ambiguity to ensure that all stakeholders can grasp the implications of the corrective actions and change requests.
5. Feedback Mechanisms: Provide opportunities for stakeholders to provide feedback or seek clarification on the proposed actions. This allows for two-way communication and ensures that stakeholders feel heard and valued in the decision-making process.
6. Follow-Up: Follow up on communications to ensure that corrective actions are implemented effectively and that change requests are addressed in a timely manner. This may involve monitoring progress, providing status updates, and addressing any further concerns or issues that arise.

By effectively communicating corrective actions and change requests, project teams can foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement, ultimately contributing to the successful delivery of high-quality project outcomes.

Quality control can be performed outside the project boundaries by other parts of the performing organization or by the customers.

Quality control can involve stakeholders both within and outside the project boundaries. Here are a few points to consider regarding quality control performed by entities external to the project:

1. Customer Involvement: Customers often play a crucial role in quality control processes, especially in projects where the end product or service directly impacts them. They may conduct their own quality assessments, provide feedback on deliverables, and raise concerns or issues related to quality.
2. External Audits: External auditors or quality assurance teams from the performing organization may conduct independent assessments of project deliverables, processes, and compliance with quality standards. These audits provide an objective evaluation of quality performance and adherence to established quality criteria.
3. Third-Party Inspections: In some cases, third-party inspection agencies or regulatory bodies may be involved in quality control activities to ensure compliance with industry standards, legal requirements, or contractual obligations. Their assessments help validate the quality of project outputs and verify conformance to specified requirements.
4. Supplier Quality Control: Quality control extends beyond the boundaries of the project to include suppliers and subcontractors involved in delivering components or services. Project teams may implement processes to monitor and evaluate the quality of inputs received from external sources to maintain overall product or service quality.
5. Collaborative Quality Management: Collaborative approaches to quality management involve partnerships and interactions with external stakeholders to jointly define quality requirements, establish quality metrics, and monitor performance throughout the project lifecycle. This collaborative effort ensures alignment of expectations and promotes shared responsibility for delivering high-quality outcomes.

By involving external entities in quality control processes, project organizations can gain valuable insights, enhance transparency, and demonstrate their commitment to delivering products and services that meet or exceed stakeholders’ expectations. This collaborative approach fosters trust, enhances credibility, and contributes to overall project success.