Project Quality Management: Micro Focus Software Development Division

This report provides an overview of project quality management within the software development division of Micro Focus, focusing on a network virtualization project. It details the determination of quality needs, performance expectations using Boehm's quality model, and the tools used to identify performance metrics like KPIs. The report explains the reasons for choosing KPI, methods to clarify roles and responsibilities using RACI, and processes for ensuring quality requirements through software quality assurance and control. It also covers methods for monitoring quality and performance using a PQM model, processes for ensuring objective attainment, and the importance of customer feedback and beta testing for quality assessment. The document concludes with references to support the methodologies and tools discussed.

Running head: PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Project Quality Management
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Introduction and description of the project:
A project on software development is going to take place on network virtualization by the
software development division of the company Micro Focus. The project manager is assigned to
ensure that the project and quality objectives would meet after the implementation of the project.
The software would enable both internal and external method of virtual networking, along with
the increase in overall throughput and performance benefits (Cohen et al., 2017).
The implementation of the project would be beneficial for the various stakeholders in
different aspects. Such as, for the end users of the software:
 It would reduce the investments in networking hardware like cables and hubs.
 It would eliminate the complexity and maintenance cost of the real-time network
along with reducing the overhead.
 It would increase the range of network availability, security and efficiency as the
network traffic would be less.
Observation Report of the project:
Task Context and date of observation / Comments Satisfactory
(tick)
Determining the quality objectives
and standard for a project and using
them to create a quality management
plan
Starting date: 1 December, 2017
Duration: 9 days
Comment: Quality management in a project is
important to make the evaluation of the project
consistent. In the first step of the quality
management plan of the project, the objectives are
identified. The quality objectives of the software
are determined keeping the requirement of the
customers in mind and the quality management
plan is completed based on the specified
objectives.


2PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Identifying and evaluate established
quality management method,
techniques and tools and recommend
a quality management approach best
suited to a project
Starting Date: 10th December, 2017
Duration: 1 week
Comment: In this phase, the tools and techniques
of evaluating the quality management procedures
have been identified and noted. The tools such as
KPI, RACI and PQM have been incorporated for
quality management of the project.

Including quality requirements in the
project management and
implementing as basis for
performance measurement
Starting Date: 17th December, 2017
Duration: 6 days
Comment: Quality needs are listed using certain
methods. This particular project would include
performance factors such as throughput, packet
loss and network efficiency. The quality
requirements are expected to be achieved against
all the performance factors that have been
identified in this process.

Participate in a quality assurance
audit of project processes
Starting Date: 18th December, 2017
Duration: 1 week
Comment: Quality assurance auditing is a
systematic and synchronized observation of a
system in order to monitor the whole planning and
keep a track of the improvements made in the
procedure. The audit of the quality assurance is
performed for this proposed software in order to
make sure that the standard and the objectives are
achieved.

Assess and prepare a report on the
quality control of project and product
output
Starting Date: 25th December, 2017
Duration: 5 days
Comment: An initial report on the quality
management plan and the quality control of the
project has been delivered including the proposed
and expected output of the project.

Identify causes of variance to quality
matrices and suggest remedial action
Starting Date: 30th December, 2017
Duration:5 days
Comment: Variance in a project is defined as a
slight but measurable change from the pre-defined
standard of the project after the accomplishment
of the complete work. In this phase, the reasons,
which might cause variance in quality matrices,
are identified. The variants are time and scope of
the project implementation. The remedies are
suggested based on the properties of the variance.

Describe and demonstrate how to
maintain a quality management
system
Starting date: 5th January
Duration: 10 days
Comment: In this phase, the whole quality
management system, which has been proposed, is
summarized and demonstrated.

Conducting a review of project
quality control processes and making
suggestive improvements
Starting date: 14th January
Duration: 1 week
Comment: Performance testing is held and


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recommendations are collected based on the
reviews.
Implement changes to quality control
processes
Starting date: 21st January
Duration: 5 days
Comment: The recommendations are included in
the project implementation process.

Review a project’s outcomes against
performance criteria to establish the
effectiveness of quality management
Starting date: 26th January
Duration: 9 days
Comment: The pre-defined performance factors
are mapped against the outcomes in order to
understand the success of the whole management
system.

Identifying and documenting lessons
learnt relating to project quality
management
Starting date: 4th February
Duration: 1 week
Comment: In the final phase of the project, the
complete outcomes and studies are documented in
a structure of report.

1. Determination of quality need and performance expectation:
To determine the quality need of the proposed software, the project manager would use
certain quality models for determining the capacity of the software to satisfy the requirement of
the project. In this particular project, Boehem’s quality model is used. The model would consist
of a hierarchical structure, which would define the high level, intermediate level and the basic or
fundamental level characteristics of the virtual network software at the time of the development
(Brown et al., 2017).
The performance expectation of the software is determined in order to build the further
strategic implementation policies. The project, in this case would discover and capture the
network performance factors such as latency, bandwidth, throughput, packet loss, would test
application performance against the network performance of real-time, and would optimize the
overall performance benefit of the virtual network (Cohen et al., 2017).

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2. The tools needed to identify performance metrics:
Performance metrics are the factors calculated in order to measure the behaviour, activity
and the performance efficiency of an organization along with the other relevant factors like
customer value and requirement. In the context of agile project management, the primary
performance metrics for the implementation of virtual network software are
 Lead time
 Cycle time
 Team velocity
 Open and close rates of the production (Snyder, 2014)
There are many tools to analyse the performance metric of a software project. It has been
reported in a global survey that almost 75% of the organizations all over the world use Key
Performance Indicator (KPI) as the tool of performance measurement (Parmenter, 2015). In this
project too, the management would use KPI as an indicator of the key performances.
3. Reasons of choosing the particular tool:
The main reason of using KPI in the software development project is to measure the
performance of the throughout the project and to analyze how well each individual stakeholders
of the project is working against their particular objectives (Kerzner, 2017). In this particular
project, KPI works broadly as different tools.
 KPI as a navigational tool: The proper implementation of KPI would tell the project
manager whether the overall development of the software is working at a proper
dimension to achieve the goal or not.

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 KPI as a decision maker: The effective KPI is related to the strategic objective of the
project. Hence, from the business point of view, selecting KPI as an indicator would be
beneficial for the company to increase the commercial usage as well.
4. Methods to clarify role, responsibilities and authority:
One of the primary keys to a successful software development project is to identify the
stakeholders and to divide the roles and responsibilities among them. The method that would be
used in this particular project is Role and Responsibility Charting (RACI), which would identify
the functional areas of the project, find the ambiguities and resolve them using a cross-
functional collaborative effort (Elhady & Abushama, 2015). The roles those are identified in
this process are the role of sponsors, client project lead, project manager and solution architect,
the development team, supporting team, testers and the team of maintenance. The usage of
RACI reduces confusion and clarifies potential areas, which are tended to confliction.
5. Methods to ensure the quality requirement:
The quality requirement of a project is the specifications of a software project. In this
particular project, the requirements are as follows:
 Consistency
 Correctness
 Feasibility
 Availability
 Usability
 Performance

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 Maintainability
 Customer feedback
The quality requirement management of a software project consists of two criteria. They
are software quality assurance and quality control. Quality assurance focuses on the assurance
of the quality needs to be fulfilled, while the quality control focuses on the methods of fulfilling
the quality requirements (Sarrab, Elbasir & Alnaeli, 2016). The integrated work of the team
according to their roles and responsibility would fulfil the requirement of the project in
optimized time.
6. Methods of monitoring quality and performance:
Monitoring the quality and performance of the development of the project is most
important in a project plan in order to ensure that the objectives of the project are going to meet.
A project-quality-monitoring (PQM) model is a systematic disciplinary procedure for the
project manager to deliver a systematic approach to standardize in the product delivered. In this
particular project of software development, the monitoring method would ensure the similarity
in effective measurement methods, KPI identification, assigning critical success factors and the
flexibility of accessing the project time to time (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The monitoring of
quality and performance would specifically focus on risk analysis, process validation and
demonstration of the feasibility of the project.
7. Processes of ensuring the objective meet of quality requirement:
After the implementation of the project, an assessment would be done in order to evaluate
the quality and to ensure that the project has reached its goal. The best way to assess and

7PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT
evaluate the software is honest customer feedback. Data would be collected from various
customers through surveys, interviews, observations, walk-through, online advertisements and
social networking sites for analysis. Moreover, the beta testing of the software would be
performed among selected customers to gain the feedback (Lewis, 2016). The quality
assessment will be performed on the result of these procedures.

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References:
Brown, T., Anthony, J. J., Chalfant, S., Gingrave, M., & Vines, B. (2017). U.S. Patent No.
9,563,919. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Cohen, R., Lewin-Eytan, L., Naor, J. S., & Raz, D. (2015, April). Near optimal placement of
virtual network functions. In Computer Communications (INFOCOM), 2015 IEEE
Conference on (pp. 1346-1354). IEEE.
Elhady, A. S., & Abushama, H. M. (2015). RACI Scrum Model For Controlling of Change User
Requirement In Software Projects. International Journal of Application or Innovation in
Engineering & Management (IJAIEM), 4(1), 214-220.
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management metrics, KPIs, and dashboards: a guide to measuring
and monitoring project performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Lewis, W. E. (2016). Software testing and continuous quality improvement. CRC press.
Parmenter, D. (2015). Key performance indicators: developing, implementing, and using
winning KPIs. John Wiley & Sons.

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Sarrab, M., Elbasir, M., & Alnaeli, S. (2016). Towards a quality model of technical aspects for
mobile learning services: An empirical investigation. Computers in Human Behavior, 55,
100-112.
Snyder, C. S. (2014). A guide to the project management body of knowledge: PMBOK (®)
guide. Project Management Institute: Newtown Square, PA, USA.