PMI CAPM – Blitz Review of the CAPM Course Part 5

9. Define and Implement Project Quality Management

Now let’s hop in and talk about project quality management, these processes, and the key things from the quality management chapter. We talked about the seven basic quality tools. Remember these? That we have caused an effect, or fishbone, also known as as an ishikawa that’s where we have an effect, a problem to solve, and you have major causes. And then branching off of these, you could have contributing causes. Your goal is to facilitate a conversation, to find causal factors.

Another one of our seven basic quality tools was flowcharting, where we chart out the flow of a process like order in or order out, or the flow of data through a system. Know the predo chart? The predo chart categories of failures from largest to smallest, moving from left to right, and then you have a little arc. Across the top is the sum of each category, all the way up to 100%. So a Peretto chart, don’t let the term histogram bother you. Just means a vertical bar chart. This is a histogram, a control chart. This is the one that I would expect seeing if I were you. That a control chart. We have our upper and lower requirements. We have control limits, and then we have a mean assignable cause.

Anything out of control, anything outside of those dashed lines is out of control. It doesn’t have to go all the way out of requirements. And then the results of seven measurements, seven consecutive measurements in a role. That was our rule of seven. A Scatter diagram shows the relationship of two seemingly independent variables. The closer these two lines are together, the more likely they are related to one another. We have some quality plans that you need to know for your exam. We have a quality management plan. It’s part of the overall project plan. It’s how will you do quality assurance and quality control? We also have the process improvement plan, where we had our process boundaries. So the start and end of a process, the configuration, sometimes called process mapping.

So it’s a graphic of the process, all the different interfaces and process metrics. So control limits and efficiency and targets for improvement. So you’re coming back into planning over and over and over. In quality management, our main theme is you want to do the work correctly. The first time quality is planned in, it is not inspected in. There are just three processes here in quality quality planning, quality assurance and quality control. So super quick moving forward. Let’s go.

10. Study Project HR Management

Project. Human Resources one of the toughest parts for many project managers because you have to deal with people. Let’s talk about the two different plans. We have the Human Resource Management plan. I’m identifying my project team needs, finding out about those, reporting relationships, doing roles and responsibilities. That’s where we had the Racy chart, Ram, a responsibility assignment, matrix roles and responsibilities. All of this planning results in the staffing management plan. That’s what we’re going to look at next. And so we have staff acquisition, the release of staff, and then also the consideration of organizational policies and structures. So you think about those different structures that you’re in a functional or matrix or projectile. So what else goes into the staffing management plan? Well, obviously staff acquisition. How do you get people on your team resource calendars when resources are available in particular people, the resource histogram.

When are resources being utilized on your project? The staff release plan. How do you get people off your project? How do you release them from having to remain on the project if they’re no longer needed? What about training needs? We have to do some competency increase. We have to do training. If you’ve never worked with a particular tool or resource before, we need training. Rewards and recognition always important to identify people that have contributed. We want to do it fairly. We want to avoid zero sum awards. That means only one person can win, like Employee of the Month, so watch out for that. And of course, compliance and safety. Based on your discipline, your application area, you know that you have some things you have to pay attention to for compliance and safety. Another big part of this chapter was our organizational theories.

So you need to be able to recognize these. Remember, Maslow five needs physiological safety, social esteem, and at the top, self actualization. It’s like you’re calling Herzberg’s theory of Motivation. We have two different agents, and they are hygiene agents. Motivating agents. Hygiene agents is what’s expected, so you’re not going to get a whole lot of additional performance in the employee employer relationship. Motivating agents promote performance. If I’m interested in those Motivating agents, you have to have hygiene agents first in order for Motivating agents to be of any use. So if I don’t get my paycheck, I really don’t care about recognition.

McLellan’s Theory of Needs this is David McLellan Acquired Needs theory that our needs are acquired over time. There are three needs achievement, affiliation, and power. And then how one determines what need drives them. As you take a Thematic Apperception Test and how you answer these questions will determine what need do you have as driving in your life? We also talked about Wi cheese theory, z, also known as the Japanese management style, the expectancy theory that people behave based on what they believe their behavior will bring them, and the Halo effect, false belief surrounding a person’s experiences or competencies or planning functional matrix projectiles. That’s where the power is functional. No fun for the PM functional managers in charge.

As you go up to projectized, the PM has the authority. A little tip here on Project Eyes, there can be some anxiety among the project team as you end near the end of the project. So we’re getting closer and closer to finishing the project. Team could start thinking, well, what am I going to work on next? Are we all going to be let go because our project is done? Strong matrix balanced and weak matrix. People have lots of things to do. They have operations and other projects. Remember Project Eyes, you’re on that project for the duration of the project team development. Remember these interpersonal skills. We also talked about training and team building activities.

The four stages. Here what I really want to get to. Forming storming, norming, performing, adjourning forming. We all come together, storming. We all hate each other and fight until we find our role. And as we go into norming, things kind of calm down. Performing. We all work together and we like each other and this is great. We’re making great progress. And then adjourning, the team disbands and they go on to other assignments. Remember ground rules. Once ground rules are created, it’s the responsibility of everyone to adhere to those ground rules. Colocation is also known as a type matrix. We talked about rewards and recognition. Money is always good and then some attitudinal and structured interviews to get an idea of how people feel about your project. Our goal of doing team performance assessment, we want an improvement in skills competency.

We want to keep that turnover rate down. We want to bring the team closer together and make them interdependent on one another conflicts. We know conflicts are going to happen, so we need to manage these conflicts. But we do it in relative importance of the conflict. And we have two people mad at each other because they both wore the same sweater to the Christmas party or they like opposing teams or whatever. That’s pretty silly in the big picture. So it’s the relative importance of the conflict. But if we have two people that are in a heated argument over how the work was done and there are disagreement about the quality and the correctness of the work, all right, then we need to get a little bit more involved. So it’s just kind of some management common sense here.

Also, what’s the time pressure? If it’s going to take weeks to resolve this conflict and the project is due in three days, okay, we need to come to a conclusion quickly and get this project done. Also, you consider who are these people? What’s the position? And then find the motivation short term or long term motivation. So if you have to deal with this for the whole project and it’s going to last a year, you might as well resolve this now and get it out of the way. You need to be able to recognize these powers on your exam. The expert power. The PM has experience. Reward. The PM can reward the team formal positional. Power. It’s not any real power.

Coercive, penalty, power. Refer it. There’s a relationship already with the PM, or the PM says, we’re doing it this way because the CEO said this is how we’re going to do it. Conflict management. Five flavors of conflict management. Problem solving. That’s what we want. Work together. Compromising. Lose lose. We both give up something. Forcing. Person with the power makes the decision. Withdrawal. One party leaves. Do whatever you want. I don’t care. I’m out. Smoothing down. Play the problems up. Play the commonalities. So it is a lose. Notice that withdrawal, by the way, is a yield. Will lose. All right. A lot of information here in this blitz. And I know we’re moving quickly. This is a quick review, so I’m talking quick. We’re moving quick. If you need more information, go back into those chapters and watch the full lecture. This is like your cram here at the end of our course. So just a quick review. Okay, good job. Let’s move on.