Q question.

Submitted by Jp2786 on Fri, 04/18/2014 - 19:21

Joe is a project manager on an industrial design project. He has found a pattern of defects occurring in all of his projects over the past few years and he thinks there might be a problem in the process his company is using that is causing it. He uses Ishikawa diagrams to come up with the root cause for this trend over projects so that he can make recommendations for process changes to avoid this problem in the future. What process is he doing?

A. Plan Quality

B. Perform Quality Assurance

C. Perform Quality Control

D. Qualitative Risk Analysis

Is he not planning which process changes to make in his subsequent project?

Thanks

Jp

Forums: 
PMP / CAPM exam Question bank
  • Log in to post comments
  • 640 reads

philstinnet

Sat, 04/19/2014 - 02:23

I think he is performing quality control. 

Is it the correct answer ?

He is trying to find the root-cause of the issue. It talks about damages in the previous projects. The damage has occured. He is trying to find what is the root-cause of the damage.

I think that it should be quality cotrol.

He is not developing a Quality Mgmt Plan or Process Improvement Plan as of yet (based on the question statement).

Please let me know if this is the correct answer.

 

Jp2786

Sat, 04/19/2014 - 02:48

I took this question from one of the forums here. Answer one of the user posted was QA, which makes sense now

One of O/P of QA is updates to OPA and since he is trying to improve process he is preforming QA.

Cheers

Jp

philstinnet

Sat, 04/19/2014 - 03:30

It is weird.

I was told during training sessions for CQA (certified quality auditor) exam that Corrective Actions and Preventive Actions fall under quality control. They are not Quality Assurance.    

It sounds like i need to dig deeper into this. May be i am wrong. I need to check my CQA books. 

If it can be of any help - 'Ishikawa diagram' falls under '7 Quality tools'. This tool is not used in QA (I agree that this is not a very strong argument though).

I need to dig deeper.

Thanks for this interesting question. I can see your point that he is trying to see if process needs improvement. 

Fishbone diagram gives the opportunity to find out the root-cause. Root-cause can come from anywhere. It can be a Man, Machine, Method (process) etc. 

He thinks that the process is the likely cause. And yet, he chose to use the Fishbone diagram. It is like he is really not sure if 'process' is the cause of the problem.

Good question !!!

 

 

 

 

admin's picture

admin

Sat, 04/19/2014 - 09:27

yes, see the post here http://pmzilla.com/plan-quality-perform-qa-and-qc

philstinnet

Sat, 04/19/2014 - 13:57

Please note - " He uses Ishikawa diagrams to come up with the root cause for this trend over projects so that he can make recommendations for process changes to avoid this problem in the future. "

He is using the Fishbone diagram to come up with the root-cause. There is a trend of defect in all of his past project. What is the cause of this defect ? Two things are common in his past proects - 1) Joe and 2) The process.

Who or what is the root cause of the problem ? Is it Joe (man) who did not understand the process ? Or is it the process (method) ? Or both ? Or something else ?

This needs to be confirmed first that what or who is the root cause of the problem. Fishbone diagram is the right tool he is using.

Joe suspects that it is the process. But, he is not sure. It is not confirmed yet. He needs to make sure that it is the process (and not himself) which is the root-cause before he can suggest changing process.

Please check the page 248 of PMBOK 5. It says under Control Quality - "Identifying the causes of poor process or product quality and recommending and/or taking action to eliminate them...."

Why should not it be Quality Control ?

 

 

 

 

 

philstinnet

Sat, 04/19/2014 - 14:29

Here is a line which goes in the favor of QA - 

" QC detected a recurrent problem with the quality of the products. QC provides feedback to QA personnel that there is a problem in the process or system that is causing product quality problems. QA determines the root cause of the problem and then brings changes to the process to ensure that there are no quality issues in future."

From - http://onquality.blogspot.ca/2011/10/difference-between-qa-and-qc.html

Now the question for me - Are CA-PA part of QA or part of QC ? Or CA belongs to QC and PA belongs to QA.

Thanks

sunku65

Sun, 04/20/2014 - 09:13

QA is correct.

 

First step:  The process problem has not occured.   while making process impovement to current project of the process in QA, he thinks that " ...He has found a pattern of defects occurring in all of his projects over the past few years and he thinks there might be a problem in the process his company is using that is causing it.".

Second step:  Then he involved to find root cause of old projects using Ishikawa diagram to avoid in this project as well as future purpose.