50+ Sample Sample Quality Management Plans

Quality Management Plan: What Is It?

A quality management plan is a must-have program for every project management system to deliver excellent quality in all aspects of work. Just like a quality plan, all the requirements to complete a project should be measured to a degree in quality. And the QMP allows project managers and the entire team to be guided not only on how to reach top-notch quality performance but also to manage and monitor that delivery from start to finish. Hence, consider the QMP as the official diagram or backbone in managing quality policies, improvements, and assurance to projects.

According to Statista’s 2015 research survey, 53% of North American IT executives agreed on using data quality management cloud services to assess data quality.

What Is the Purpose of a Quality Management Plan?

First of all, quality management is the process that assures consistent quality to a product, service, or company. And with a quality management plan to observe, the quality involved in the whole project cycle is wholly managed. For example, project management plans could benefit a lot in recognizing their quality policies. The same goes for identifying who is responsible for the project, conjecturing the project deliverables and procedures, and complying with the necessary documents. Nonetheless, the importance of QMP also depends on the company’s purpose or goals.

Also, quality management plans help all sorts of businesses, may you deal with construction, healthcare, or even software development. Another example is for businesses concerned with data quality. Did you know that in 2015, 53% of North American IT executives depend on data quality management cloud services to manage effective data quality? Clearly, a sense of quality plan helps complete projects efficiently in all phases. What matters the most is you understand the two factors of quality management which are product quality and process quality. Product quality refers to the tangible products to create while process quality involves the impact of procedures that made the personnel deliver results.

What Are the Key Elements of QMP?

A quality management plan would not have been successful without its key players. And no, this does not just involve the project manager and the whole personnel because the key elements that make up a solid quality management plan are the following:

Project Deliverables: The project deliverables are expected to have their quality reviewed. The same goes for the processes behind dealing with such projects. The problem is when a business has a very detailed project plan yet there is no assurance if the quality meets according to standards. Hence, this element is paramount.Deliverable Quality Standards: You need the appropriate measurement system to compare quality standards. And these deliverable quality standards are responsible for how close you are to the deliverable’s result. Mind the term “appropriate” because deliverables do not always have the same quality standards. That usually depends on the project’s activity, technology, and other information.Customer Satisfaction: Just like most feedback forms, the customer satisfaction criteria will help you understand how clients react when all deliverables are completed. This part is also your chance to investigate what standard quality sounds acceptable to customers. Thus, the results covered from the criteria and deliverables are used for evaluation.Quality Control Activities: Every quality control activity should be assessed if things are going well or not. This part is also crucial in confirming if all the project deliverables have met the quality standards in actuality. Hence, do not just base on assumptions in controlling and assessing quality but refer to real outputs.Process Quality Standards: Other standards to watch out for are the points of measure to evaluate if all the processes to deal with the project were actually observed as planned or the other way around. Thus, rely on heavy evaluation reports with process quality standards as well.Stakeholder Expectations: Anyone concerned about the life of a project can be a stakeholder. And their expectations must be managed promptly, starting with a clear description of what to expect when the project is already completed. In other words, pushing too hard on a project that will not satisfy the stakeholders means the overall work was as good as nothing.Quality Assurance Activities: If there are quality control activities, then quality assurance activities are also significant. These are necessary if the quality expected among deliverables were actually followed and utterly successful.

The Four Main Components of QMP

Quality management plans are divided into four components—but what exactly are they? These are quality planning, quality assurance, quality, control, and quality improvement. The reason there are more aspects involved is that the quality is not only limited to the goods and services. The process of accomplishing them also has its own quality to assess. So in this section, you will learn about the role of each component of QMP.

Quality Planning

Quality planning is where the process is drafted or designed in the hopes of meeting the proposed goals. Similar to planning reports, quality planning marks the foundation of QMP to determine the plans under the proposed operating conditions. This usually takes time to make but it is very important since you will use it for reference on how to ace the QMP later on.

Quality Assurance

Meanwhile, quality assurance means paying attention to each stage of the project process if enough quality was delivered from start to finish. That way, it gets easier to call out or remind team members if ever poor quality results are present. Just as it is named, quality will be assured in the end.

Quality Control

Quality assurance and quality control are somewhat related. But quality control takes maintenance to the next level by ensuring that rigid and systematized standards should apply to products and services produced. If an output has bad quality, then it won’t pass standards; thus, it will be rejected.

Quality Improvement

On another note, quality improvement is like the aftermath of QMP wherein improvements and development plans are relevant to boost quality. Thus, QMP is more than just figuring out what a good or poor quality output is because once bad quality results are involved, you need to cultivate it after. And thanks to improvement schemes, the need to waste, lose, or rework on projects will be lessened.

How to Make a Quality Management Plan

Before starting any project, make it a standard to start dealing with the project management and quality management plan first. But, bear in mind that there is no perfect way to craft quality management plans, especially when the quality for each business and purpose won’t be the same all the time. However, there is a common structure for most plans. So in this section, you will learn about the basic ways to create a quality management plan.

Step 1: Plan and Review QMP’s Development

Even a quality management plan begins with a strategic plan. So before making it, start by identifying the necessary quality objectives. Customers can help a lot in this segment when they express their expectations towards quality. And in recognizing standards, this will involve the overall standards from legal, economic, health, safety, environmental, and code standards. Slowly craft an efficient plan by observing the four main components of QMP, which were already discussed before. That way, you will eventually reach the right QMP requirements.

Step 2: Use a Sample Quality Management Plan

Don’t ignore the sample quality management plan templates in this post. Those are your options to work on the QMP with standard formatting and labels; hence, starting a QMP out of scratch is gone from your worries. You can even edit the templates however you want. So add as much relevant data as you want to present your plan. The same goes for personalizing the plan by not only mentioning the specific project, event, website, or subject to assess quality for but also providing further intricate details.

Step 3: Write Briefly and Distinctly

The challenging part in constructing the QMP would be the writing process. Make sure you keep things brief or short. But, never ever leave out the significant details too. Balance by being straightforward and succinct. Also, you need to use language that is easily understandable. Simple English will already suffice. And a smart way to shorten sentences by also presenting the data strategically is to use graphic organizers. An organizational chart, graph, flowchart, or any way to present data properly can help lessen confusion.

Step 4: Execute the Plan Orderly

Everything drafted in the quality management plan’s document should not just remain in the document. Put them into action. Since you already constructed the plan and its standard operating procedures, following the instructions is the only concern. This is where you take project execution seriously as it is crucial to make sure your plan succeeds in the real application. To execute orderly, ensure that everyone involved in the project communicates effectively, particularly by meeting regularly and giving instructions clearly. Also, observe the changing conditions to adapt along the process. Sometimes, the plan even changes after seeing the effects of the plan in reality. Take notes of the significant observations and come up with modifications to the plan if necessary.

Step 5: Take Quality Checks Seriously

Of course, quality checking is part of the process since quality assurance and quality control have been reiterated in the QMP anyway. Perform the expected technical review and verification with stern assessment reports. The results being evaluated help assure if the plan is sufficient or still needs plenty of improvement. And do not forget to use different tools that you find effective to conduct management oversight. And the findings involved are worth sharing with the project manager, the whole team, and concerned stakeholders.

Step 6: Prepare for Corrective Actions

Anyone who creates the QMP for the first time will likely face some errors and issues. And that is normal since the quality management plan may change from time to time. But, do not just allow mistakes to take over always because taking corrective actions is standard. Any unwanted effect should be given a proper solution. So craft quality performance improvement plans to insert the appropriate revisions that will ensure the QMP meets its objectives and pays off in the end.

FAQs

What are the three fundamental objectives of a quality management plan?

The three fundamentals of the QMP are to handle things correctly as planned, to avoid things from going wrong, and to continuously cultivate the project or process involved.

Who should be involved in making the quality management plan?

Besides the project manager and the entire personnel expected to conduct quality management, the test engineer and project stakeholders should take part in creating the QMP.

What are the basic principles of quality management?

Quality management is expected to have seven main principles. These are the people’s engagement, customer focus, leadership, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision, and relationship management.

Clearly, a quality management plan is crucial to any project’s cycle. That means even from the very beginning, everyone involved in the project already understands the importance of quality and how to evaluate or deliver stellar quality as planned. Without QMP, high-quality products and services, cost savings, effective team collaboration, and quick delivery pace might just remain a dream. So instead, put plans into action by being guided with quality management plans. Start working on your QMP with samples to download and edit now!