Quality is one of the main criteria by which a customer will define a product, service or brand. Organizations spend huge resources in quality management, where the purpose is to define and implement the means by which the project will create and verify products or services that are fit for purpose.
Best management frameworks such as PRINCE2, ITIL, PMP, and Agile etc. have adopted the purpose of having quality within their framework. Although most of the companies have specialist or certified professionals working on projects and service delivery, they lack in expertise on quality management. A role of a project or a service manager is not only to deliver the end product but also to ensure whether it is fit for purpose.
The quality can be ensured by having a dedicated quality management team looking after the progress and end result. However, having a dedicated team is viable only for big companies who work on large scale. Smaller companies handling small projects are very apprehensive hiring a quality management team, considering the returns and employee cost. This is an ideal situation that 50% of the organizations face at the moment.
All project and service managers agree that quality is a major area which requires considerable importance. The acceptance of this need has seen project managers are keen to gain knowledge on quality management which becomes a great tool in managing projects and services. Organizations also welcome project or service managers with additional expertise on managing quality. This helps small organizations by saving costs on additional employees and also having a project or service manager who knows the product well to manage the quality too. This also has improved the average pay scale of a project or service manager.
There are several professional certification courses on quality and standards such as Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, ISO etc. These certification courses recognised worldwide and by Fortune 500 companies. The certification courses are of various proficiency, starting from a basic level to expert level. For instance, Six Sigma is a desired course which several project and service managers are certified. The Six Sigma certification schema is:
- Six Sigma Yellow Belt (Free)
- Six Sigma Green Belt
- Six Sigma Black Belt
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
- Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
The above certification courses are very popular among the project and service managerswho are PMP, PRINCE2, ITIL, and MSP etc., certified professionals. If you are a project manager and looking for an area to improve your professionals and personal skills, quality management professional certification should be in your next shopping cart.