PMBOK PMP Quality Terms Demystified
Master Your pmp exam quality questions
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QUALITY terminology for PMBOK
These quality management terms are very important for your PMP exam, so do make sure you fully understand each of them and you can replicate the statistical measurements.
Total Quality Management (TQM)
This is a theory that has been around since the 1950s and states that everyone in an organization is responsible for quality and is able to make a difference in the ultimate quality of the product.
TQM is the primary quality focus away from the product that is produced and looks instead at the underlying process of how it was produced.
This shows that how something is produced is far more important than what is actually produced.
Kaizen (Continuous improvement)
Kaizen is a Japanese management turn referring to a philosophy that stresses constant process improvement in the form of small changes in the delivery of products or services
Just in time (JIT)
This is a manufacturing method that brings inventory down to zero, or near zero, levels. It forces a focus on quality, since there are no excess inventories on hand to waste
ISO 9000
This forms part of the organization for international standards (ISO) To ensure that companies document what they do and do what they document.
ISO 9000 Is not directly attributable to higher quality, but maybe an important component of the perform quality assurance process since it ensures that an organization follows their processes.
Statistical independence
When the outcomes of two process is are not linked together or dependent upon each other, they are statistically independent.
Rolling a six on a die the first time, know that increases nor decreases the charts that you will roll of six the second time. Therefore, the two roles would be statistically independent.
Mutually exclusive
A statistical tie them that states that one shall use excludes the others. For example, painting a house yellow and painting it blue or white, are mutually exclusive events.
Standard Deviation
The concept of standard deviation is an important one to understand for your PMP exam. Standard deviation is a statistical calculation used to measure and describe how a set of data is organized.
The following graphic of a standard belt of illustrates standard deviation:
The standard deviation, represented by the Greek symbol sigma, is calculated first by averaging all the data points to get the mean, then calculating the difference between each data points and the mean, squaring each of the differences, and dividing the sum of the squared differences by the number of data points minus one.
Finally, take the square root of that number, and you have the standard deviation of the data set. If the data set is “normally distributed”, as it is in the above chart, then the following statistics will be true:
Standard Deviation
Standard Deviation may be used in a few different ways in quality.
For example, the higher your standard deviation, the more diverse your data points are.
It is also used to set quality levels, and to set control limits to determine if a process is in control.
Even though you should not expect to have to perform standard deviation calculations for your PMP exam, you will likely see questions related to the application of the standard deviation.
Six sigma
Six sigma is a popular philosophy of quality management that focuses on achieving very high levels of quality by controlling the process and reducing defects.
A defect is defined as anything that does not meet the customer’s quality standards.
As you have just learned, a one the sigma is defined as one standard deviation from the mean. At the level of one sigma quality:
68.25% of all the outputs will meet quality standards.
At the three-sigma quality level, that number jumps to 99.73% of all the outputs that meet quality standards.
At the six-sigma level, the number is 99.99966% of all outputs that meet quality standards.
This means that when quality reaches six sigma standards, the results will be such that only 3.4 out of every one million outputs do not meet quality standards.
Six sigma quality strives to make the overwhelming majority of the belt of four consistently within the customer quality limits.
Six sigma puts a primary focus on quantifying, measuring, and controlling the quality of products, services, and results.
It is based on the underlying theory that anything will vary if measured to a fine enough level.
The goal is to refine the process so that human error and outside influence no longer exist, and any remaining variations are therefore completely random.
If carried out correctly, the statistical an outcome should follow the belt of previously illustrated. The goal is to make six standard deviations (sigmas), Of the outputs for within the customer’s quality limits.
It is important for your PMP Exam, to remember that six sigma is a quality management philosophy that sets very high standards for quality.
One sigma quality is the lowest quality level, allowing 317,500 defects per one million outputs
Three sigma is higher, allowing 2700 defects per one million. Six sigma quality is the highest of these, allowing only 3.4 defects per one million.
It is important to remember that six sigma quality levels may not be high enough for all projects in all industries. For example, the pharmaceutical industry, the airline industry, and Power Utilities, typically strive for higher levels of quality than six sigma would specify in some areas of their operations.
