If you haven’t attended one of our Project Management webinars yet, you should! All of our webinars are free of charge and the project management webinars give you a free PDU (professional development unit). Plus, our PM presenters have over twenty years of experience teaching project management and PMBOK concepts. This week, I attended the webinar on Six Sigma and quality. Great content!
The audience participated and gave some of the main reasons why projects have quality issues. One reason that jumped out for me was this – people on the project team make errors and we, as project managers, do not give them feedback on these errors. It’s important to let people know when they make a mistake so that they can course correct.
How often do we need to provide feedback? Continuously! For people to change habits, they have to commit to the change and repeat the new behavior for ninety days. That means it’s our job as project managers to remind people gently of the course correction needed.
If your organization is like many of our new Project Insight customers, your project management processes might not be super well defined. If that is the case, the first step is to get your processes documented. Once documented, circulate it around for additional comments. Then refine your processes over time. Last, be sure to communicate your processes to the team continuously. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Another project quality issue is that people don’t really enjoy the requirements gathering process. That is why customers try to dodge this step and project managers sometimes allow them to dodge this step. Also, customers have challenges articulating their requirements. If that is the case, the project manager needs to tease out the information. This step is mission critical. Customers that are good at describing their requirements, usually get what they want.
It’s tempting to take shortcuts, but don’t! When problems or issues arise on the project, as they will, be sure to communicate these to the project team and the customer immediately. Document any issues and share the information.
Six Sigma is about improving quality and lean is about how to eliminate waste. Project managers need to:
- 1. Improve quality
- 2. Eliminate waste
- 3. Eliminate lead time
- 4. Reduce overall total costs
It’s tempting to pass the buck, but don’t! There is a significantly higher cost if the product goes into production with an error than if we communicate the error early in the process. As project managers, we need to take our roles seriously. Don’t side step issues and errors as they come up.
Watch what you are spending time on. We have all seen how less important items can blossom into critical items if ignored.
Be sure to give the project team a target or a set of goals to shoot for. That is why acceptance criteria are so key. Create the goals with QUANTITATIVE measures. Express them in dollars, hours or percentages.
Questions or comments? Feel free to share them below!
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