Making a Party out of Project Management: Chapter 3 - Figuring Out the Details - Part 1

               After Abby and her friends finished defining the scope of the party and figuring out how communications would work, it was time for them to go home for dinner. Abby made sure to take a nice break from the work, knowing there was plenty to do still and not wanting to get burned out. Her mom was almost done making dinner when Nathan watched her put a thermometer in the pork chops.

               “How come you need to do that, Mom?” he asked inquisitively.

               “The meat has to be cooked hot enough that we won’t get sick from eating it,” she explained.

Even though Abby was taking a break from her work, an idea still came to mind.  “If Dad’s grilling meat for everyone at this party, he’ll need to check it with a thermometer to make sure it’s thoroughly cooked, just like Mom is doing,” she thought to herself, “and for everything else in general, how do I know that the work for the party will be done well enough to make it a success?”

After a nice dinner and mealtime conversation with her family, Abby decided she was ready to get some more work done that evening. She went to her room and kept thinking about what it would mean for the work on the project to be “good enough”. How would she know? How would she measure work and results? Thinking back to her work with her friends that day, Abby knew she could rely on the scope they defined to guide her in deciding what to check for quality as work occurred. In addition to what to check, Abby also tried to think through how to measure each quality item and when it would need to be measured, and how to record results and make project document updates.

With that, Abby set out to make herself a quality management plan. She knew things needed to be measured and checked to ensure the party would be a success, but she also knew that having a method for doing all of the quality checking was as important as the quality checking itself. What would be quality in the eyes of the stakeholders, specifically Nathan, Mom, and Dad? What risks [10] could be realized (in other words, could happen) if quality were to be lower than required? While better quality is usually assumed to be a good thing, could quality actually be made too good to the point of being counterproductive?

[10] A risk is an event that may or may not happen during a project and may have either a positive or negative impact on the project.

Pondering questions like these helped Abby to write about key concepts to make a solid quality management plan. She zeroed in on what types of quality were important for the project, and how much emphasis on quality was right for the party she wanted to throw. As Abby examined each major portion of her project’s scope, she performed cost-benefit analysis to decide what quality measures were worthwhile. Looking over the picnic tables after they are set to make sure they look good would be one thing – measuring with a ruler to make sure the tables are set exactly would be a little overboard. The quality measures Abby chose to adopt would need to be noted in the requirements traceability matrix to ensure they were met as part of fulfilling the project’s requirements.

WBS ID numbers, quality specifications, and notes added to the requirements traceability matrix.

Next, Abby came up with some specific quality metrics to use for ensuring things were being made and set up correctly. These metrics would be the specific numerical levels required to fulfill certain quality criteria. Some of these included checking the temperature of the meat as it comes off the grill or ensuring all of the food items on the serving table have serving utensils. Others included ensuring all of the seats in the park are clean and the garbage cans aren’t too close to the eating area. How clean is “clean enough” for the seats, and how close is “too close” for the garbage cans? Evaluating some quality metrics would be straightforward, like making sure there were tongs, ladles, and serving forks and spoons to help people load up their plates.

With other metrics, Abby asked around or used trial and error. Holding the party in a big, open park, Abby figured it would work well to have the garbage cans about thirty feet away from the eating area and everything else. That way, people wouldn’t have to walk far to throw items away, but they also wouldn’t have to endure foul odors or swarms of bees while they ate or played. Less than twenty feet would cause these problems for people eating, but forty or fifty feet away would be excessively inconvenient.

Most metrics would need to be checked at specific times in the party prep, with many of those specific times being right before the start of the party. Abby wanted to make quality checklists to review everything in the right order, as efficiently as possible. She even drew up a map of the setup she envisioned at the pavilion to help her understand how the party would flow and where she should go to check on everything. Of course, it only made sense that these checklists would include items Mom and Dad would want to review, and that the metrics on the checklists would be up to the quality standard they would want. What’s the point of making something to comply with a quality metric if that quality metric isn’t good enough to meet the customer’s requirements and needs? It wouldn’t do any good, for example, to have a checklist item for meat cooking to 150 degrees or “hot” if it has to be cooked to 165 degrees before it’s safe to eat.