Managing projects with special focus on quality

M.Phil.A project is successful if it is finished on time, to cost and to quality. Time and cost are relatively easy to understand and measure, however it is not easy to measure quality during the project life cycle. In spite of quality being stated as one of the major criteria of project success, appropriate attention to this is not always given in the context of projects. There are several possible definitions of good quality on a project. A project is said to be of good quality if the project's outcome has the following [17]: • Meets the specification • Is fit for purpose • Meets the customer's requirements • Satisfies the customer. Projects based organisations design and build complex items/systems such as aircraft or locomotives in relatively low volumes, or design and construct bridges, processing plants, that are unique, and once-off projects. Products such as aircraft have extended working lives, therefore after-sales support such as maintenance, servicing and upgrading are more important than for product-based organisations. A great proportion of management and engineering effort is therefore absorbed by such support functions. In projects more effort goes into design and production or construction engineering compared with product based organisations. According to Carruthers [3] "Very often projects that have been successfully completed within nominal scope, time and cost from the project manager's point of view turn out to be failures in the long term because of operational, product quality and/or marketing problems. The positive or negative influence of quality lasts long after 'cost successes' or 'schedule compliance' have been discounted or even forgotten." Examples of projects, which failed due to what the author regards as 'poor quality', will be discussed at the end ofthis dissertation (i.e. in chapter five)