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8 - PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT

8.2.1.5 Project documents

Project documents may influence quality assurance work and should be monitored within the context of a
system for configuration management.

8.2.2 Perform Quality Assurance: tools and techniques

8.2.2.1 Quality Management and control tools

The Perform Quality Assurance process uses the tools and techniques of the Plan Quality Management and
Control Quality processes. In addition, other tools that are available include (see also Figure 8-10):
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• Affinity diagrams. The affinity diagram is similar to mind-mapping techniques in that they are used
to generate ideas that can be linked to form organized patterns of thought about a problem. In project
management, the creation of the WBS may be enhanced by using the affinity diagram to give structure
to the decomposition of scope.
• Process decision program charts (PdPc). Used to understand a goal in relation to the steps for getting
to the goal. The PDPC is useful as a method for contingency planning because it aids teams in anticipating
intermediate steps that could derail achievement of the goal.

• Interrelationship digraphs. An adaptation of relationship diagrams. The interrelationship digraphs
provide a process for creative problem solving in moderately complex scenarios that possess intertwined
logical relationships for up to 50 relevant items. The interrelationship digraph may be developed from
data generated in other tools such as the affinity diagram, the tree diagram, or the fishbone diagram.

• tree diagrams. Also known as systematic diagrams and may be used to represent decomposition
hierarchies such as the WBS, RBS (risk breakdown structure), and OBS (organizational breakdown
structure). In project management, tree diagrams are useful in visualizing the parent-to-child relationships
in any decomposition hierarchy that uses a systematic set of rules that define a nesting relationship. Tree
diagrams can be depicted horizontally (such as a risk breakdown structure) or vertically (such as a team
hierarchy or OBS). Because tree diagrams permit the creation of nested branches that terminate into a
single decision point, they are useful as decision trees for establishing an expected value for a limited
number of dependent relationships that have been diagramed systematically.

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