The planning and design team must have the necessary skills, time and resources to achieve the quality objectives of the project. Everyone must have a shared, concerted understanding of the project vision as well as the strategies and actions that must be implemented to realize it. Once the team members have been mobilized, the team must remain stable from one stage of the project to the next; this is imperative to ensure the maintenance and sustained growth of the knowledge specific to the project, which is necessary for consolidating project quality.*
How can team members be mobilized and engaged toward attainment of the project’s quality objectives?
The quality management plan contains the strategies and actions chosen by the team members to enable them to realize the vision of the project and achieve its quality objectives.
To map out a quality management plan:
- Use the Compass and complete the Quality Vision and Quality Operation exercises as a team. The Compass is a unifying tool that allows exploration of various scenarios for implementing quality in concerted fashion.
The quality champion is someone who intervenes at milestone steps of the project to continually stimulate achievement of the quality objectives.
Keys to designating the right resource:
- Do they have basic knowledge of quality in design and architecture?
- Do they show leadership and the ability to debate and express themselves in public?
- Do they possess the critical thinking skills needed to support and facilitate dialogue?
- Are they curious and openminded about new ideas, concepts, etc.?
- Do they exhibit and encourage initiative and a proactive approach to experimenting with new ways of doing things?
- If the professional mandate were to be terminated or reassigned during the course of the project, would they be able to support the resumption and continuation of the work toward achievement of the quality objectives?
Keys to continually stimulating quality:
- Identify the strategic milestones when the team is to be gathered to validate the progress of the project toward the quality objectives to be attained;
- Define the nature of the deliverables to be produced to enable assessment as a team of the project's progress.
The competencies required vary depending on the quality objectives to be attained.
To identify which experts to bring in:
- Think interdisciplinarity
- Think in terms of a cross-cutting approach
To roll out the quality management plan, the team must:
- Be able to rely on availability of resources in sufficient numbers at the required points during the project;
- Guarantee linkages from one stage of the project to the next, to ensure retention and continual expansion of the project knowledge.