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This post gives an overview of the third of the three processes in the Quality Management Knowledge Area, namely process 8.3 Perform Quality Control, by listing the inputs, tools & techniques, and the outputs of the process.   Perform Quality Control belongs to the Monitoring & Controlling Process Group, and focuses on the product or deliverables, as opposed to the previous process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance (in the Executing Process Group) looks at the processes.

1.  Inputs

The first three inputs come the first quality process, process 8.1 Plan Quality.  Some inputs from the Integration Knowledge Area (Work Performance Data and Approved Change Requests), and of course the deliverables themselves which are to be sampled and inspected as a part of this process.  Finally, all the quality-related documentation is an input to this quality control process as well.

2.  Tools & Techniques

The seven basic quality control tools from 8.1 Plan Quality Management are used:

•  Cause-and-effect diagrams (aka fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams):  for finding root cause of quality problems
• Flowcharts:  for analyzing processes as a step towards improving them
• Checksheets:  for collecting data on a quality problem
• Pareto diagrams:  identifies those few sources that are responsible for the most quality problems
• Histograms:  describes the statistical distribution of quality data
• Control charts:  determines whether process is stable or predictable
• Scatter diagrams:  used to indicate correlation between variables

I have reviewed these tools in previous posts.  Statistical sampling and inspection are the main tools used on the deliverables themselves.  Finally, any previously approved change requests are checked to make sure they are implemented.

3.  Outputs

The quality control measurements from the statistical sampling and inspection are an important output of the process.  Deliverables that have been approved by the customer or validated deliverables, as well as deliverables that have been verified by the quality control process are outputs of the process.  Quality-related documents are also outputs.

These are the main ITTOs (inputs, tools & techniques, and outputs) of this process.

The next post will cover the purpose of the quality control process.

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This evening I watched a science-fiction movie that came out three years ago, Avatar.    When I saw it as it first came out in the theaters, I was blown away at first by the world-creation that James Cameron had undertaken of the planet Pandora in the telling of the story of the film.    I read somewhere in the blogosphere that the plot of the movie was similar to that of another groundbreaking film from 1990 called Dances with Wolves.   Basically the movie starts off with the main character identifying as one of the colonial invaders into the land of a native people whose lifeways are being disrupted by their invasion.   Gradually the main character’s perspective changes to that of the native people and he is caught looking at his own culture through their eyes.    The difference in Avatar was that he helped them fight back–and they ended up winning!   It took the medium of science-fiction to criticize our own culture through the lens of a fictional set of aliens.

H. G. Wells was sympathetic to the various colonial peoples subjugated by the British empire, and decided to try to create a way for the British people to empathize with them through the medium of science fiction as well in his book War of the Worlds.   What if an alien race treated the British, and indeed all of humanity, in the same way that the British were treating various peoples around the world?    The result is his invention of a race of Martians whom he described in his opening lines as follows …

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”   Notice the lack of empathy of the Martians who saw man in the same dispassionate way that men study microbes.

In Things Fall Apart, you get to know the main character Okonkwo and see the life of his tribe in pre-colonial Nigeria through his eyes.   Then after the scene is set, the culture of his tribe is gradually distorted, and then destroyed by the colonial British who are colonizing Nigeria.    The culture’s destruction is presaged in the destruction of Okonkwo himself, and then, in the midst of sorrow for the passing of the hero, the last chapter’s perspective suddenly changes.

Rather than going from the colonizer to the colonized, like Avatar and Dances with Wolves, the last passage switches from the viewpoint of the colonized to that of the colonizer, and the tribe that Okonkwo comes from is described with the same scientific detachment and lack of empathy which H. G. Wells described men having towards microbes or, in his fictional tale, of Martians having towards men.

I read the story years ago in college, and out of respect for Chinua Achebe’s recent death, decided to re-read it.   Nothing prepared me for the shock of the ending, not just the death of the protagonist, or the death of a culture, but the death of perspective that the very last of the book describes.

I think that is why Avatar, Dances with Wolves, and War of the Worlds have all appealed to me because they do promote empathy with the other.   And the reason why Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a pleasure to read, although a difficult pleasure indeed, is because it shows clearly the beauty of another culture and the contrasting ugliness of a mindset that, unlike the greeting of the Nav’i people “I see you” in Avatar,  says essentially “I do NOT see you”.   Without the gift of empathy, which a writer like Chinua Achebe can nurture, it may be impossible for those here to see that they have more in common with the rest of the people of the world than they could ever have imagined at first.

We are one family, after all.

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1.  Introduction

The last of the seven quality management tools that may be used in conjunction with process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance is that of matrix diagrams.

The matrix diagram is used to show relationships between a single set of factors or between 2 or more sets of factors. It differs from the prioritization matrix in that the prioritization matrix tries to quantify the ranking among the factors. The matrix diagram gives a qualified relationship between the factors, denoting the relationship with symbols like + for a positive relationship or a – for a negative relationships.

2.  Example–House of Quality (HOQ) tool

An example of this can be found in the House of Quality tool that demonstrates the method of Quality Function Deployment (this image is taken from Wikipedia).

Notice the “roof” of the house which contains the relationships between the various design features proposed for this product development. If two factors influence each other positively, there is a circle, with a dot in the circle for a strong positive influence. On the other hand, if there is an X, that means there is a negative influence between the factors. If the influence between the factor is weak, there is a triangle. This is, of course, a single example; other companies may use other symbols to represent similar types of relationships.

By the way, you may notice that in the “basement” of the House of Quality model, there is a list of weighting factors underneath each design feature which demonstrates an example of the prioritization matrix that was talked about in a previous post; it is tool #5 out of 7 of the quality management tools.

In fact, you can convert a matrix diagram into a prioritization by taking each of the symbols for strong, medium, or weak relationships (both positive and negative) and assigning them a weighting factor from 0 to 9 and then adding up the various values for the symbols.

Finally, the website http://www.syque.com/quality_tools/toolbook/Matrix/how.htm gives the following examples of the different types of matrices that can be used to compare a set of factors (L-type matrix), two sets of factors (T or X-type matrix), or even three sets of factors (C-type or Y-type) in a three-dimensional matrix.

The matrix diagram is therefore used to chart the complex interrelationships between various one, two, or three sets of factors. It is used to focus on the complicated details of a particular aspect of a problem that has been previously identified and broken down using some of the other tools mentioned in previous posts in this series.

This concludes the survey of seven quality management tools that can be used in conjunction with process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance.    Next week I will describe the last of the three quality processes, 8.3 Perform Quality Control.

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1.  Introduction

This is the sixth in the series of posts on 7 different quality management tools that can be used in conjunction with process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance.   This last tool is that of activity network diagrams.   In connection with project management, they are mostly associated with project scheduling.

If you are asked:  how long will this project take, you need to create an activity network diagram. Once you create the diagram you need to figure out the critical path, which is the path from the start to the finish of the project with the longest cumulative duration.  Those activities on the critical path may not be delayed without delaying the schedule as a whole. Other activities that are NOT on the critical path may be delayed for a certain period of time without affecting the schedule, and the amount of “wiggle room” in the schedule for any given activity is called the float of that activity.

2.  Creating an activity network diagram

First step is creating the activity network diagram.

2. Critical path method

To determine how long a project will take, you need to find out the critical path, that is, the sequence of activities in the network diagram that is the longest. Other paths along the network will yield sequences of activities that are shorter than the critical path, and they are shorter by an amount equal to the float. This means that activities that have float could be delayed by a certain amount without affecting the schedule. Activities along the critical path have a float of zero. This means that any delay along the critical path will affect the schedule.

Here’s an outline of the critical path methodology.

a. You create a network diagram of all the activities.

b. You label each activity with the duration derived from process 6.4 Estimate Activity Durations.

c. You do a forward pass to determine the early start and early finish date of all activities, from the start of the project to the end of the project.

d. Once at the end of the project, you do a backward pass to determine the late start and late finish date of all activities, from the end of the project to the start of the project.

e. For each activity, you use the results of c and d to calculate the float of each activity.

f. All activities that have 0 float are on the critical path for that project.

3.  Critical path method–alternative

In practice, an easier way to get the float of each activity is to do the following:

a. You create a network diagram of all the activities.

b. You label each activity with the duration derived from process 6.4 Estimate Activity Durations.

c.  List the various paths in the network.

d.  Find out which path has the longest duration:  that is the critical path.

e.  All activities on the critical path have 0 float by definition.   Label all those activities with 0 float.

f.   Find the path with the next-highest duration compared to the critical path.    Calculate the difference between that duration and the duration of the critical path:   that is the float for any activity that has NOT already been labeled as having 0 float (in step e).

g.  Keep finding the path with the duration that is next-highest, calculate the difference between that duration and the duration of the critical path:   that is the float for any activity that has NOT already been labeled with a float in previous steps.

This method is faster than using the forward and backward pass method, which is important on the PMP or CAPM certification exam when time is your main constraint.

The final post tomorrow will deal with the seventh quality management tool used in conjunction with process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance, that of matrix diagrams.

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1.  Introduction

There are seven quality management tools listed by the 5th Edition PMBOK® Guide as being tools & techniques of the process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance.    The 5th tool out of these 7 tools is listed as prioritization matrices, which aids the decision-making process by helping prioritize or rank various alternatives for implementation.

The prioritization matrix is also called the criteria matrix.   It can be used when deciding which Six Sigma projects to work on, in deciding which design features are Critical to Quality (as part of Quality Function Deployment using a tool called The House of Quality), or in making a decision with regards to any set of criteria such as the frequency, severity, and difficulty of dealing with a set of risks.

2.  Methodology of Prioritization Matrices

The table below outlines the typical methodology used in constructing one of these prioritization matrices.

This tool is used only after the various options are clearly known, so it is best that this tool be used after some other brainstorming tool, such as multi-voting, the nominal group technique, or the Ishikawa or fishbone diagram, is used to identify those options.

The next post will cover the sixth out of the 7 quality management tools that may be used in process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance, namely activity network diagrams or arrow diagrams.

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1.  Introduction

There are seven quality management tools listed under the tools & techniques for process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance.   This post is on the 4th out of the 7 tools listed, Tree Diagrams.

A tree diagram, also known as a systematic diagram, can be used to represent decomposition hierarchies such as the Work Breakdown Structure.   A tree diagram is used to communicate logical relationships between critical events (such as with failure tree analysis) or specific objectives (decision tree analysis). One event may cause another, and that new event may cause a series of others, so you have a hierarchical relationship that resembles the branching of a tree.

2.  Example:   Decision Trees

In the context of project management, it can also be used to calculate the expected monetary value of a series of alternatives faced when making a decision, hence the term decision trees in this context.  In risk analysis, the expected monetary value is computed by taking the a) probability of an alternative and multiplying it by b) the monetary impact of that alternative.

Let’s say you are putting on a company picnic, and you pick a weekend date for it. You are holding a raffle for charity that costs $5 per ticket and you want to calculate how much money you think you will make on the raffle. You have to have some allowance for if it rains. Let’s say the long-term weather forecast is for it to have an 80% chance of clear skies or scattered clouds, and 20% chance of rain. If you are trying to forecast how much money you will make, then you have to account for both probabilities, whether it will rain or not rain.

Now if it is does not rain, your past experience tells you that there will be 100 people that show up. If it does rain, again your past experience tells you only half the people will show up, giving you only 50 people that will come to the event.

In either case, your past experience tells you that each person on average buys 2 tickets that cost $5 each, so each person spends $10 on the raffle on average.

Now what is the expected payout for the event? In the case of “No rain”, there will be 100 people X $10 spent per person or $1000. In the case of “Rain”, there will be 50 people X $10 spent per person or $500. However since the probability of “No rain” is 80%, and the probability of “Rain is” is 20%, the expected payout will be on average

(Probability of “No rain”) X (Payout of “No rain”) +

(Probability of “Rain”) X (Payout of “Rain”) = (80% X $1000) + (20% X $500) = $800 + $100 = $900.

It can be used in decision making, where the decision tree consists of 3 types of nodes:-

a. Decision nodes – commonly represented by squares

b. Chance nodes – represented by circles

c. End nodes – represented by triangles

In the example above, whether it rains or not rains would be represented in squares, the probabilities of 80% and 20% would be represented by the circles that lead from these squares, and the end result we’ve listed above ($800 payout for “No rain” and $100 payout for “Rain”) would be represented by triangles at the end of the branches.

3.   Another Example:  Fault Trees

Tree diagrams can also be used in failure mode analysis, where instead of decision trees, you have fault trees,where instead of decisions, you have critical events that occur in the failure of the part. Each of these will have events that cause these failures, and these events will have their causes and so on, where eventually you get to the root causes.

In project management, breaking down a project into activities through the work breakdown structure could also be considered an example of a tree diagram.

4.  Conclusion

Tree diagrams can help visualize logical or hierarchical relationships between events, objectives, or tasks. In certain applications, such as risk management, it helps identify the probabilities of the various outcomes, which helps in the calculation of the relative contribution each “branch” makes.

The next post will cover the fifth out of seven quality management tools used in process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance, that of prioritization matrices.

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There are seven quality management tools that are listed among the main tools & techniques for Process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance.    This posts covers the third out of seven tools, Interrelationship Digraphs.   The word “Digraphs” refers to the linking of various pairs of ideas.

The Relations Diagram, also known as an Interrelationship Diagram (or Digraph), is a brainstorming tool for exploring the cause-and-effect relationship between a series of ideas or facts.    It is often used to explore the relationship between a series of ideas that were generated using other quality tools, such as the Affinity Diagram (tool #1), Tree Diagram (tool #4), or the Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram (one of the quality ools from process 8.1 Plan Quality Management).

Here’s how it works (the methodology is similar to that of Quality Management Tool #1: Affinity Diagrams):

The results should show the natural links that emerge among the various issues or presented, and will help the team discover root causes of the problem defined at the beginning.   

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There are seven quality tools listed under the “tools & techniques” for process 8.2 Perform Quality Assurance.   This post covers the 2nd of these seven tools, Process Decision Program Charts or PDPCs.  The idea of the tool is list those steps which are required to get towards a goal.   They are particularly useful in contingency planning because it aids in identifying intermediate steps which might derail the achievement of that goal.

In a way, a process decision program chart is similar to failure mode effects analysis in that it tries to map out the ways things can wrong, not with respect to the design, but with respect to the process itself. It is a way of mapping out countermeasures to those things that can go wrong, and so could be considered a tool of risk management.  Risk management is especially important when projects are complex and the schedule constraint is tight (i.e., no delays permissible).

Here’s the steps required to create a PDPC.   Please note that this tool may require the output of the fourth out of seven quality tools listed for this process, namely Tree Diagrams.

Here’s an example taken from ASQ’s Learn About Quality feature regarding this tool. This is taken as an example of a medical group that is trying to improve the patient care for those patients that have chronic illnesses like diabetes.

How are the six steps from the above list used in the creation of the PDPC above?

1.  Create Tree Diagram of Plan

Take the high-level objective (first level), list the main activities required to reach that objective (second level), and then under each activity list the tasks required to accomplish those activities (third level).

The high-level objective is the first level:  in this case, it is to create an effective Chronic Illness Management Program.  The main activities to reach that objective are in the second level:  to support patient self-management, to support decisions, to have an effective information system, and to redesign the delivery system.   The tasks required to accomplish those activities are listed in the third level.

2.  Brainstorm risks

Brainstorm and figure out what could go wrong for each of the third-level tasks that could prevent them from being accomplished.

For the third level tasks, you need to brainstorm to think of what could go wrong that could prevent them from being accomplished.   These represents the risks.    In the above diagram, as an example, there are two tasks, Patient Goal-Setting and Practice Teams, that have risks associated with them that might prevent those tasks from being accomplished.

3.  Rank risks

Rank the risks created in step 2 according to probability and impact. Eliminate those risks if the probability is low and the impact is negligible, or both. Therefore you are left with only those risks which medium to high probability and medium to high impact on the project.

This step is omitted in the diagram.

4.  List Risks

List all remaining risks after step 3 under the tasks they are associated with, creating a fourth level on the tree diagram created in step 1.

Let’s assume that the risks which low probability and/or impact on the project have been eliminated, and the risks that are left, Inappropriate Goals and Backsliding (for Patient Goal-Setting), or Staff Resistance to Role Changes and Patients Want to See MD (for Practice Teams), are assumed to have medium to high probability and/or impact on the project.   Then these are listed underneath the tasks that they belong to, creating a fourth level on the tree diagram.

5.  Brainstorm countermeasures

Brainstorm and figure out for each risk what could be done to either a) prevent it from happening or b) remedy the situation if it does occur.

The results of this brainstorm are then made into a list (see next step).

6.  List countermeasures

List all countermeasures underneath the risks they are associated with, creating a fifth level on the tree diagram modified in step 4.

The fifth level has countermeasures listed to prevent each risk in the fourth level from occurring.   For example, to prevent the risk of Inappropriate Goals from occurring, the countermeasures of Nurse Guidance and Approval and Checklist of Possible Goals are listed.

7.  Rank countermeasures

Rank the countermeasures created in step 5 according to their time, cost, and ease of implementation. After deciding the criteria, decide which countermeasures are practical and mark those with an O, and mark those that are impractical with an X.

You can see that the countermeasures in the fifth level that are impractical are marked with an X, such as Replace Resistant Staff (one of the possible countermeasures to the risk “Staff resistant to role changes”).

I hope you can see from this example not only how the Process Decision Program Chart can be used to identify risks and countermeasures, but also to rank them so that only the most relevant risks are handled, and only the most feasible of countermeasures are used to counteract those risks.

The next post will cover tool #3, Interrelationship Digraphs.

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1.  Introduction

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2013 was published in November 2012 and was described has having the following methodology.

a)  Identify global risks, which are risks that are global in geographic scope, cross-industry relevance, uncertainty as to how and when they will occur, and high levels of economic and/or social impact.

b)  Categorize the global risks into five Risk Categories: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological.

c)  For each Risk Category, rank each risk according to likelihood and severity.

d)  Using the ranking, identify the risks of greatest systemic importance as the Centers of Gravity for each of each Risk Category.

e)  Identify Critical Connectors which are risks that are connected to the multiple Centers of Gravity, and thus link all global risks into one coherent system.

The purpose of this post is to go into detail about steps a) through c) were achieved.

2.  Steps  A, B.  Identify Global Risks and Categorize Them

A survey was done of 50 global risks with world-wide expert and industry leaders, with the question being asked about what the a) perceived impact and b) likelihood for each risk would be over a 10-year time horizon.   The experts were asked answer on a scale from 1 points to 5, with 1 being the lowest impact or likelihood, and 5 being the highest impact of likelihood.

These 50 global risks were put into the following five categories

1.  Economic

2.  Environmental

3.  Geopolitical

4.  Societal

5.  Technological

Step C.  Most Likely and Most Severe Risks for 2013

Based on the responses from the experts, the top five MOST LIKELY global risks for 2013 were the following:

1.  Severe Income Disparity (4.22)—Economic

2.  Chronic Fiscal Imbalances (3.97)—Economic

3.  Rising Greenhouse Gas Emissions (3.94)—Environmental

4.  Water Supply Crisis (3.85)–Societal

5.  Mismanagement of population ageing (3.83)–Societal

The higher the number, the greater the likelihood, with the remaining 45 global risks being less than the five listed above.   The top two factors seem to be risks relating to the global economy, followed by an environmental risk (rising greenhouse emissions), and two societal risks (water supply and population ageing).    The current list of most likely risks for 2013 is the same as the one for 2012 with one exception, in that mismanagement of population ageing has displaced the threat of cyberattacks as being more likely to occur within the next 10 years.   Those risks relating to the global economy are still considered the most likely risks to occur.

Based on the responses from the experts, the top five MOST SEVERE global risks for 2013 were the following:

1.  Major Systemic Financial Failure (4.04)—Economic

2.  Water Supply Crisis (3.98)—Societal

3.  Chronic Fiscal Imbalances (3.97)—Economic

4.  Diffusion of Weapons of Mass Destruction (3.92)–Geopolitical

5.  Failure of climate change adaptation (3.90)–Environmental

The higher the number, the greater the severity, with the remaining 45 global risks being less than the five listed above.   The top risk relates to the global economy, followed by a societal risk (water supply crisis), another economic risk (chronic fiscal imbalances), a geopolitical risk (diffusion of weapons of mass destruction), and an environmental risk (failure of climate change adaptation).   The top three risks on the current list of most severe risks for 2013 is the same as for the list for 2012, but the fourth and fifth risk are new in 2013, reflecting the more prevalent concern about the threat of weapons of mass destruction and the failure of climate change adaptation.

Just from going through the first three steps of the methodology, one can gain an understanding of  the different types of risks that are being considered, the ones that are considered the most critical, and how this perception of risk has changed in the recent past.

Next weekend, I will discuss the three risk cases that focus on the complex interrelationships between many of the top global risks listed above.

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The World Economic Forum’s Risk Response Network or RRN has come out with Global Risk Report 2013, which can be viewed and downloaded on their website http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/

1.   Methodology of Report

The report discusses global risks using the following methodology:

a)  Identify global risks, which are risks that are global in geographic scope, cross-industry relevance, uncertainty as to how and when they will occur, and high levels of economic and/or social impact.

b)  Categorize the global risks into five Risk Categories: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological.

c)  For each Risk Category, rank each risk according to likelihood and severity.

d)  Using the ranking, identify the risks of greatest systemic importance as the Centers of Gravity for each of each Risk Category.

e)  Identify Critical Connectors which are risks that are connected to the multiple Centers of Gravity, and thus link all global risks into one coherent system.

The result is a map which shows the ecology of global risks and how they are all interrelated.

2.   Overview–Contents of Report

The first part of the report discusses the most serious risks from a standpoint of both likelihood and impact.

The second part of the report consists of three case studies which focus on special categories of risk, and one special report on mitigating global risk.

Case 1:   Testing Economic and Environmental Resilience

This case explores the risks due to climate change.

Case 2:  Digital Wildfires in a Hyperconnected World

This case explores the risks due to the spread of disinformation on the Internet.

Case 3:   The Dangers of Hubris on Human Health

This case explores the risks due to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The third part of the report shifts from reporting on what the global risks are to how to mitigate them–this is for decision makers the most important part of the report.

Special Report—Resilience:  Preparing for Future Shocks

This case explores he Importance of building national resilience to global risks.

The fourth part of the report discusses “X factors”.   In addition to the exploration of risks that are considered to be the “known knowns”, there are emerging risks that need to put on a watch list called “X factors” which represent the known unknowns.

I will be going through the report in several blog posts to discuss the methodologies, the findings, and the recommendations of this report.

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