So, I’ve already talked a little about how to ensure quality in what you are producing. But let’s take a look at it in a little more detail, to get a better understanding.

As we know, we need to make sure we have criteria that describe what the quality of the final output should be. These criteria need to be agreed beforehand between those making the output, and those who will be using the output.

But quality isn’t just something to be tacked on to the end of the project, polishing the final output until it comes up to scratch. Quality needs to play a part throughout the project. Each task that forms a part of the project should have appropriate quality constraints as part of it.

But what is an appropriate quality constraint? Well, the most obvious constraint is that the output of the task should actually be what the task was supposed to produce! It should meet the criteria that have decided before the task started.

Now, these criteria will not have been decided at the very top level. No, they should instead have flowed from the quality criteria that were set at the top, for the output of the project as a whole. But for the individual tasks, criteria should be set either as part of the scheduling meetings, or when the tasks are being divided up among the team.

And, of course, we need to have decided who gets to assess whether the output of the task meets the quality criteria. Usually it is better to have someone who didn’t do the work to assess the quality. This isn’t because the person who did the work is going to deliberately conceal flaws (hopefully…) but simply because they are likely to have been too close to the work for too long to be objective about it. Fresh eyes see more clearly.

Finally, don’t think you can get away form this scrutiny as a project manager. Don’t forget that you have many tasks that need to take place in the project too – monitoring, production of reports, etc. All of these are an output of a task – and so they should also be subject to a check on their quality!

At the beginning of the project, we should have identified a project assurance role, and someone to fill it. This role should be examining the project management outputs, and providing feedback and info to you on improving them, as well as providing the independent eye of the Executive in checking progress of the project.

By checking quality throughout the project, you make sure that by the end, we don’t have to suddenly tack on a few more weeks to get the final output to the quality it needs to be. It should just flow naturally from the high quality of the tasks done to get to the end.