5 Ways to Increase Project Quality

A big part of project success is meeting business objectives. Project quality is the degree to which a project meets its objectives. Here are five tips to ensure the quality of your project outcomes.

• Don’t jump to the solution too quickly. The foundation of delivering quality is ensuring that your project solves the problem or supports the desired opportunity. To ensure that you deliver a quality solution, take the time to research the current tools, processes, strengths, and weaknesses in your business area.
• Unfortunately, projects are often launched with a particular solution in mind. For example, if your organization runs a project to implement a new finance system when lack of financial control is due to poor control processes, the project is a waste of time and money. Do your homework to identify the problem and root cause before launching a project.
• Build customer engagement from the project start. You need input from the right people to deliver a solution that supports the stakeholders’ needs—not only knowledgeable people, but people from each affected stakeholder group. Include those people as you gather requirements and don’t assume you understand the stakeholders’ needs. Otherwise, your project deliverables could go unused, when the unsatisfied stakeholders declare them unfit for the business.
• Don’t shortcut testing. Testing is often scheduled at the end of the project. As deadlines loom, testing is often reduced to keep delivery schedules on track. Although that approach may deliver on time, the probability of product issues is high. To ensure quality project outcomes, make testing time sacred and include testing activities throughout your project lifecycle.  For example, reviews of paper deliverables, engineering models, mock business walkthroughs, and software prototypes will save you save time and money in the long run.
• Focus on business processes. Two process-related activities are crucial, yet often overlooked. First, be sure to capture as-is processes, so your project doesn’t overlook business activities it needs to accommodate.  Second, update to-be business processes as deliverables are built and changes accommodated. If you don’t, staff training won’t cover the changes, which could lead to misunderstandings about what your product can and cannot do. To achieve business outcomes,  implement standard project activities to capture and document as-is and to-be business processes. As the team produces deliverables, it should also create and document the corresponding new or altered business processes.
• Take human factors into account. Peter M. Senge said, “People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.” The perceived quality of your deliverables depends on your ability to bring your stakeholders along on your project’s change journey. Involve your stakeholders early, keep them informed as you progress, especially as changes are made. By doing so, you will increase your chances of your outcomes satisfying the business objectives.

For more about project quality, check out Daniel Stanton’s Project Management Foundations: Quality course.