Quality management is a cornerstone of organizational success; yet, many businesses struggle to invest in proper quality assurance and risk management. Why? From my research and firsthand professional experience, some reasons include the following:

• Implementation challenges: Organizations frequently encounter challenges when planning and implementing a quality management system (QMS). This includes a lack of leadership commitment, inadequate training, and resistance to change. These hurdles can prevent organizations from successfully establishing and implementing effective quality management plans and practices.

• Resource constraints: Small and medium-sized companies and organizations often lack sufficient resources to develop and maintain a comprehensive QMS. After all, an effective quality management plan requires effort, experience, and skills to develop, plan, execute, and monitor to really move the needle towards noticeable improvement. ​

• Lack of awareness: Some organizations are unaware of the benefits and value that an effective QMS can provide.

• Complexity and bureaucracy: The complexity of implementing certain quality and industry standards can be daunting, leading some companies to avoid establishing a formal QMS.​

Benefits of Implementing a Quality Management System (QMS)

Despite the reasons above, implementing a QMS can yield many benefits for organizations, which include the following:

• Improved On-Time Delivery: Companies with mature quality management systems have a higher on-time delivery rate, averaging 92% compared to 74% for those without mature systems.​LLCBuddy

• Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Organizations that invest in quality management practices report a 40% reduction in customer complaints and a 25% higher customer retention rate. ​LLCBuddy

• Cost Savings: 67% of organizations achieve at least $25,000 in savings within one year of adopting a formal QMS, with 27% saving at least $100,000. ​Qualio

Additionally, according to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide, Eighth Edition, embedding quality into processes and deliverables drives value to customers, stakeholders, and the organization as a whole. 

How to Implement a Quality and Risk Management System

If you are in the process of determining how to implement a QMS and where to begin, here are some steps to follow:

Step 1: Start with WHY.

When we think of improving quality, organizations often believe it is something they must do to compete with other companies and organizations. Although true for the most part, solving any problem and making an improvement begins with WHY. 

Why start with why? Because the WHY never changes. The WHAT and HOW might change, but the WHY shouldn’t.

For example, if your organization needs to improve quality output to improve the customer experience, then that is the WHY. As organizations grow and evolve, the WHY should never change. However, HOW you provide customers with a good experience can change based on market changes, feedback loops, learnings, and outcomes from continuous improvement cycles.

The Risks of Not Understanding WHY

If the project, product, or change owner leading the effort doesn’t understand the WHY behind an improvement, then you can’t expect your team to really solve the problem and achieve a successful outcome. This also sparks a chain reaction. People who struggle to understand the why behind a new quality control process or change will struggle to adhere to new processes and changes, and may even find it difficult to find motivation to adopt new habits that support the change. As a result, this increases the risks of reducing or worsening quality and even QMS implementation failure. 

Understanding the WHY ensures team buy-in, support, and motivation, which increases the chances of achieving a successful outcome and driving value. And when teams and organizations consistently achieve successful outcomes, everyone benefits. 

Step 2: Perform a Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

You can’t build a quality management system without first understanding why, how, and where a failure or error occurred. To do this thoroughly, perform a root cause analysis (RCA). 

There are several root cause analysis techniques. One of my favorites is “The 5 WHYs”. For example, if someone in your organization claims a process improvement or another type of solution is needed to improve quality, your first question should be WHY. You might even have to ask WHY multiple times. This will help ensure that the WHY is aligned with the organization’s goals, objectives, values, and mission.

Step 3: Gather requirements.

A big part of quality management is ensuring end users’ needs are satisfied. Requirements management has a direct impact on quality management. Understanding stakeholder needs when developing and implementing a QMS is a must-do step. 

The Voice of the Customer (VOC)

The process of eliciting, collecting, and organizing requirements involves design thinking. By prioritizing user needs, organizing data into meaningful insights, and embracing iterative testing, design thinking empowers us to break through cognitive biases and uncover new possibilities. When developing or improving a product or service, or designing a training experience for a group of learners, a significant part of design thinking involves the ability to empathize with the end user, or put yourself in their shoes. This is also known as Voice of the Customer (VOC).

Requirements = Quality Results and Better Outcomes

Here’s a real-life example. I had the privilege to work with an organization to implement a digital reservation system for visitors to reserve a tram ride. As project manager, we spent a great deal of time, effort, and resources front-loading the project by gathering requirements and vetting potential vendors. Because we had crisp and clear requirements, that saved us a great deal of time in implementation—by WEEKS. This allowed us time to assess the quality of the system and solution. Nearly a season under our belt, the system has yielded a great deal of positive customer feedback—and no more complaints about long tram lines.

All in all, proper elicitation methods and thorough requirements management yield higher quality results and outcomes.

Step 4: Define a razor-sharp scope.

After gaining a sense of WHY and understanding and prioritizing end-user or stakeholder requirements, the next steps are to develop a scope and set goals. Goals should be measurable, with specific key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. After all, you can embark on a journey to improve a process, or the quality of a product or service, but how will you know if it’s actually a success? Remember, what gets measured gets done. 

Step 5: Implement the QMS.

You can’t manage or improve quality without change management and a mindset for continuous improvement. Focus on small wins. The continuous improvement process (CIP) is just that—a process. It is based on the notion that the world—organizations, politics, economics, and even technology—constantly changes. That means a process that works and is satisfactory yesterday and today may not be satisfactory tomorrow. 

Building Internal Controls, Changing Habits, Introducing Change Management

There are two primary aspects to building and implementing internal controls: reducing errors and risks, and improving quality. There is also the technical aspect, which involves implementing or improving processes with QA steps, checkpoints, and job aids —all of which are effective tactics that significantly improve quality. The other aspect is the people aspect. Building internal controls isn’t just about giving people a job aid or a checklist to follow; it’s also about changing routines and habits, and avoiding multitasking and task switching. In fact, according to the Agile Practice Guide by the Project Management Institute (PMI), not only do multi-tasking and task switching increase the risk of errors, because resources aren’t 100% focused and dedicated to one particular task or project, but their productivity also drops between 20% to 40% on average—and this number multiplies with each additional task and/or project.

Build processes that enforce and support routines, as well as small, “bite-sized” habits for people to follow. Routines are really built on keystone habits, and support growth and reduce risk. Routines reduce uncertainty among employees, minimize conflict, and help establish truces, all of which in turn increase productivity. Routines should be built not just from the processes themselves, but also from a mindset of continuous improvement. They should really hone in on the source of motivations, inspirations, and manipulations—or what drives people to do better. These are primary influencers of human behavior, and they can all be leveraged to help enforce internal controls and foster the right keystone habits among employees, thereby reducing risk and improving quality. All in all, building internal controls isn’t about manipulating people negatively or in a way that is harmful or that creates a toxic work environment. Rather, it’s about intrinsic motivations. 

Be sure to also introduce feedback loops. When it comes to educating staff and stakeholders on new processes or systems to improve quality, feedback loops are essential. Providing feedback not only to staff directly, but also on the quality of their learning, is crucial for establishing new processes and habits that stick, ultimately improving quality over time.

Remember that change management is essential in this process—without a mindset focused on continuous improvement, quality initiatives will fail to gain traction. Small, consistent improvements lead to long-term success, reinforcing a culture where quality becomes second nature rather than an afterthought. One effective way to plan, track, and monitor changes incrementally is by using a Kanban board. 

In many cases, quality managers, product managers, and project managers can become so engulfed in managing and overseeing key aspects of the project, product, and process that the fundamentals of change management are often overlooked. This includes team-building and morale. Beyond data, human behavior plays a critical role in maintaining quality standards.

Ultimately, implementing a QMS should still involve team-building and collaboration. However, motivation is key to ensuring a team puts forth the necessary effort and attitude to develop and improve a quality product or service. Therefore, it’s essential to communicate and reinforce value regularly to maintain high motivation levels and support teams in their dedication to improvement. 

Step 6: Monitor quality, costs, and risks.

Gather Facts and Analyze

A key component of quality management is leveraging data to drive decision-making. Tools such as check sheets and Pareto diagrams can help organizations identify recurring issues and prioritize efforts accordingly. Effective problem-solving in quality assurance involves not just analyzing data but also applying critical thinking and creativity.

Data Behind Error-proofed Delivery—and Decision-making

One important thing to remember when analyzing quality output data is the difference between correlation and causation. It’s essential to analyze and interpret data carefully to avoid drawing incorrect conclusions. And don’t worry—AI can help with this. For example, writing clear acceptance criteria for software features ensures thorough testing before deployment, reducing the risk of defects reaching the end user. AI can further streamline quality management by detecting patterns, automating inspections, and predicting potential failures before they happen. 

The Cost of Quality

Of course, implementing a QMS might sound awesome, but like anything, it requires an investment. This is known as Cost of Quality (CoQ). Before you close out of this blog and avoid reading further, know that the cost of preventing defects before they occur is significantly lower than the cost of addressing issues after they reach the customer, or failing to meet compliance with specific industry standards, or even the cost of waste (which comes in the form of rework, schedule delays, excess inventory, and many others). 

This is known as CoQ, and is broken into three categories:

1. Prevention costs – The costs associated with preventing an error or defect before it occurs. One example is building internal controls into processes to reduce the occurrence of errors and defects, and acquiring resources to help achieve and maintain the desired level of quality. This could include inspections, feedback loops, and other quality checks to ensure deliverables meet quality standards. 

2. Appraisal costs – These are costs associated with evaluating, measuring, inspecting, and auditing products, deliverables, or services.

3. Failure costs – These are the costs associated with noncomformance of processes or quality checks, resulting in a low-quality product for customers, stakeholders, or end users.

Proactive quality management strategies enable businesses to minimize failure costs while improving overall efficiency and customer satisfaction. You can use a House of Quality (HoQ) Matrix to map customer needs (like accurate dates and fast turnaround) to technical actions (like checklists and automation).

All in all, the cost of doing things right the first time is significantly lower than any of the items mentioned. However, despite these facts, organizations often fail to implement strong internal controls, standardized processes, and quality checks.

Value = Trust

After you peel away the numbers and analysis related to deviations from your Pareto charts, one element that is often overlooked but is crucial to improving quality is trust. If your organization or department has suffered financially or has harmed its reputation due to frequent errors, issues, or conflicts, then you have likely lost trust from your key stakeholders. As you build internal controls, grow, and improve quality, you will also need to re-earn trust from stakeholders. Stakeholders need to see value in your output. This takes time and can only happen through consistency. The difficult thing is that earning trust is nearly impossible to measure. All in all, stakeholders need to see value in what you do and provide before they trust you. In all scenarios, this is because the WHY, WHAT, and HOW are all out of balance.

To ensure you are properly embedding quality into processes and deliverables, think about the three quality dimensions. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Performance: Do the deliverables or processes function as intended by the project team and other stakeholders?
• Conformity: Are the deliverables and processes aligned with specifications and fit for use?
• Reliability: Do the deliverables and processes maintain the consistency necessary to meet or exceed desired outcomes?

Leadership

Believe it or not, leadership also plays a role in a solid QMS. How? Accountability. Accountable leaders focus on delivering quality and valuable deliverables and projects far beyond the day-to-day tasks and project work. 

Don’t Forget About Project Management

Embedding quality into the DNA of an organization and driving change are possible. By improving quality, businesses can reduce risk, optimize performance, and drive sustainable growth.

One surefire way to ensure a quality management plan is well planned and executed is to have a project manager run point. Although project management adds another layer of cost to building and executing a quality management plan, it helps ensure that quality and risks are being actively addressed. Project managers will be responsible for collecting and eliciting all customer satisfaction requirements and ensuring all internal controls, processes, and sequencing of activities to meet those quality requirements are well planned, documented, implemented, and communicated appropriately. A project manager will do this by ensuring the correct sequencing of activities and timing are built into a master project plan.