How To Create A Quality Management Plan: A Complete Guide

Updated 23 September 2022

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Before starting work on a new project, a company creates a comprehensive development strategy. One such strategy is the quality management plan or QMP that ensures stakeholder's appreciation, customer expectations and effective communication. Learning and understanding everything about QMP can help you create project frameworks that deliver quality results. In this article, we discuss what QMP is, review its benefits, learn the step to conduct and implement it and discover a few tips for working with QMP.

What Is A Quality Management Plan?

A quality management plan is a part of the project management plan (PMP) and comprises strategies a company might use to reach organisational goals and distribute project tasks. Using a robust QMP, businesses can easily prepare services and products to ensure they have a positive impact on the business and its customers and stakeholders. It ensures the final products provide value, meaning they positively impact the organisation and meet the customer's expectations.

This process primarily involves a test engineer who evaluates work from the customer's perspective and reviews the product's functioning. Some critical components of a QMP are:

Project deliverables: Project deliverables are tangible or intangible items a company produces for its customers. These deliverables undergo a quality review.
Deliverable standards: These are quality standards that help determine a project deliverable's successful outcome. The deliverable standards might vary depending upon the project.
Customer satisfaction: The customer satisfaction criteria describe when every deliverable is complete and acceptable to the customer. Typically, the test engineer evaluates a product against criteria set by the customer.
Process quality standards: The quality standards determine if the company or project team follows the prescribed processes to complete a job. This can help a company create products or provide services that meet consumer expectations.
Quality standards: Quality standards measure the success of a deliverable. This criterion might vary depending on the project.
Stakeholder expectations: Stakeholders expect a project to follow their specifications. Typically, they approve all high-impact changes to the project.
Quality assurance activities: These activities monitor and verify processes used for managing and creating deliverables as per expectation. This can improve the overall performance of a product or service.

How To Create A QMP?

Use these steps to create a QMP for managing your team:

1. Understand what quality means for a company

The first step in creating a QMP is contemplating and understanding what quality means for an organisation. Establish a plan by understanding what quality levels the stakeholders and customers expect from the organisation. Understanding what quality means to the organisation can help you create a plan that accomplishes it. For instance, a quality mobile or web app is one that is high-performing and easy to navigate. After establishing the definition of quality, ensure your team members understand its importance and adhere to the quality standards.

2. Delegate the tasks among team members

The second step of QMP is identifying which team members can perform specific tasks based on their experience, skills, industrial experience and technical expertise. By conducting surveys, you can find a professional who can deliver feedback about their peers and help you understand the strengths of each team member. For instance, if you have an experienced software developer, you can ask them to write the code for the web or mobile application. It is essential to delegate tasks based on the project deadline and employee experience to ensure the team completes the project on schedule.

3. Create a list of required equipment

The next step is creating a list of required equipment and materials the team requires for providing a quality outcome. It might be beneficial to research technology or project that make production more efficient. For example, the QMP can specify the requirement of applications that help streamline the work and ensure timely completion. It can even help outline training sessions for team members and then teach them how to operate the equipment before the project starts.

4. Outline the approval criteria

Working with customers, stakeholders and project engineers can help outline project success and approval criteria. You can create approval criteria by aligning them with the definition of quality. Interestingly, you can base your criteria on features the target audience wants in the products or services they purchase. When deciding the approval criteria, team members can understand how their work affects the overall quality of products produced and services rendered. When creating approval criteria, using terms team members can easily understand might be beneficial. It can help in reducing workplace confusion.

5. Use the testing protocols

Testing protocols are vital for the successful implementation of the QMP. They ensure the products work as expected. Implementing a QMP throughout the production might help assure the quality of one step before moving to another. As the project grows and software releases become more frequent, it can help in saving time. To ensure the quality of products, conducting a range of tests on your QMP can help ensure quality outputs. This criterion might differ depending on your project type and the steps involved.

6. Ensure materials are easily accessible

When a project team receives material on time for the entire team, it can save time and prevent mistakes. Project management software can help keep the project progressing and remind team members of upcoming deadlines. You can share colour-coded spreadsheets and instruction manuals that detail every assignment step. Using simple formatting and language allows employees and stakeholders to understand the content of the QMP.

Why Is A QMP Important?

Here are a few reasons a QMP plan is important:

Enhances customer satisfaction

A QMP encourages companies to think strategically and fulfil the needs and interests of the customers. It helps companies produce products and provide services that exceed expectations. It can even ensure customers prefer your products over competitors. For instance, during the brainstorming phase of a project, a project team might investigate the attitude of customers toward products already present in the market. While executing your plan, your team might provide some suggestions on making products more convenient for customers.

Encourages teamwork

Various departments come together to ensure the quality delivery of products and services to customers. Every member of an organisation, mainly the project management team, contributes to the QMP. It identifies the team's weaknesses and strengths and gives tasks to employees in which they excel. When a company recognises and values employees' contributions, it motivates employees to work productively. It might also encourage cooperation and build trust with multiple team members.

Increases problem-solving skills

Creating a project framework can help identify and escalate problems before they escalate. It includes a list of potential challenges that might affect the quality of work. A part of QMP involves educating team members on steps to overcome hardships while accomplishing organisational objectives. It also helps employees find alternative solutions while adhering to the quality principles followed by the organisation. When unprecedented situations occur in the workplace, QMP can make it easier to restructure the workflow.

Builds confidence in the team

QMP can instill confidence in employees and help complete job duties to perfection. When your project submission appeals to stakeholders, customers might trust the company and help you manage future projects. When you receive customer acknowledgement, communicating with them becomes more accessible during production. It can even help in completing an assignment or project within the deadline. For instance, upon suggesting a creative method, the customer might allow you to experiment with new services and approaches because your previous work shows your capabilities. It becomes easier to collaborate on future projects.

Tips For Using A QMP

Use the following tips for conducting a QMP:

Know the effectiveness of your framework

After implementing the steps of QMP, analyse the project's success to know the effectiveness of your preparation and framework. Evaluating your framework makes it easy to highlight areas that require improvement. For instance, an organisation might review or change its testing protocols to ensure higher project accuracy and quality.

Use the QMP for future projects

To save time and money, you can use the QMP of your existing project for future projects. When the framework garnered success for previous projects, you might feel confident in completing similar projects in the future. Also, reusing the QMP might be a beneficial choice if you plan to develop a comparable product or target the same demographics of customers. Before reusing QMP, ensure to incorporate feedback and suggestions from stakeholders and employees to meet the project's expectations.