Assignment #6 - Quality Management Plan

Assignment #6 - Quality Management Plan

Assignment 6 Overview

Assignments #6 (as well as Assignment #7) will be completed as team assignments. Assignment 6 is a Quality Management Plan for the City of Metropolis Geodatabase Project. You will be required to work with your assigned team (instructor will identify team composition) to complete this assignment. To carry out this assignment, assume that your team represents the Contractor providing project work to the City. The City's project manager (Lucille Geodata) has asked you to document your process for meeting the City's quality requirements and adhering to all required content, format, accuracy, and other quality criteria--as stated in the RFP and any additional quality criteria that you will put in place for the project. She wants to be comfortable that the deliverables provided by your firm will closely meet City requirements. In addition, she wants you to suggest steps that the City team should take to review deliverables as they are submitted, check for quality compliance, and to formally accept or reject deliverables. Only one jointly prepared submittal per team is required for Assignment 6 and will be submitted by the team leader.

Your Submittal for Assignment #6

With your teammates, create a Quality Management Plan for the Metropolis Geodatabase Development Project. A project must plan for quality of deliverables from the onset and put in place quality control and quality assurance checks to ensure that deliverables meet required level of quality. This plan will identify expected levels of quality for project deliverables and steps that your team will take to ensure that deliverables submitted to the City meet stated quality requirements. The main basis for your Quality Plan is Section 5 and Section 6 of the (City of Metropolis RFP). These parts of the RFP state expected quality criteria for the contractor’s deliverables—see Table 2 for a summary of the deliverables. Specifically, this Assignment should address quality management for the following deliverables (see RFP Table 2):

• MD2: GIS Data
• MD4: Design and development of custom GIS applications to support City update of data

The Quality Management Plan should cover the following topics:

• Cover page with prominent title and all necessary information identifying the course, assignment, author, and date. The main title of the document should be "QUALITY MANAGEMENT PLAN". The Cover Page should also reference "City of Metropolis" and the full project name. At the bottom of the Cover Page (right side is best), include the course name and number, assignment number, Team number and team members, and date.
• Table of Contents
• Introduction about the purpose of this plan
• Brief project background and scope overview--Mention the launch of this project and assembling of a Project Team with Publc Works in the lead. Explain that the City initiated the project with PW in lead. Mention the RFP and hiring of your firm. Make a brief statement about collaboration between the contractor and City team and summary of roles in the project.
• Summary of deliverables--description of the two deliverables (MD2 and MD4) which are the subject of this assignment. Don't include a lot of detail but describe them as a basis for getting into more details about quality management relating to them. You can use excerpts from Table 2 of the City's RFP. Provide a reasonable amount of detail becuase this is important to understand quality management workflows.
• Define the terms "quality" and "quality management" as it relates to this project.
• Explain the quality parameters for Deliverables MD2 and MD4 (NOTE: These come from the RF and are also referenced in Canvas Table 7-2)
• Present and explain the quality management workflow for MD2. A flow chart* and accompanying description should be included. This should explain the workflow for contractor deliverable development and QC and submittal to the City AND the QA checking process and tools used by the City to accept (or reject) data deliverables.  NOTE: Suggest making this a separate Section in the document
• Present and explain the quality management workflow for MD4.  A flow chart* and accompanying description should be included. The workflow should cover the design and development process (by the contractor) and the iterative review and comment process with the City team.  The quality management workflow should show include final User Acceptance Testing and approval by the City, followed by preparation and review of documentation.  Remember that there are two MD4 deliverables (the office-based and the field-based applications). You do NOT need to include a workflow diagram separately for each of these MD4 applications but the accompanying text should explain the quality management for these two applications.  NOTE: Suggest making this a separate Section in the document.
• Include a summary of the automated and manual tools and processes that will be used to support the QC and QA work by the Contractor and the City Team.  This should include some detail about the Web-based SD4 QA tools.
• Explain how Deliverable SD4 is used to support Deliverable tracking and the City's QA process.

*See the GIS Management Handbook for ideas on format and style for flow charts.  Symbology uses "Unified Modeling Language" (UML) symbology.  Mainly, you'll be using two symbol types with connecting arrowed lines: rectangles that are workflow steps and "decision diamonds" which represent a point where the workflow path may take more than one path based on a condition.

Make sure you describe the workflow explaining the complementary roles of the Contractor and the City in quality review and acceptance of the deliverables. For Deliverable MD2, this workflow includes the Contractor QC activities for data deliverables and then submits to the City for its QA review (culminating in acceptance or rejection). 

As in all written assignments, you should include a cover page which includes the following information: a) course number and name, b) assignment number and name, c) your name, and d) submittal date. The cover page should also have the full project name, title ("Quality Management Plan"), and name of your contracted company. Your submitted assignment should be formatted as specified in the Format Quality of this assignment’s rubric below to earn maximum points. As you prepare this assignment, START WITH AN OUTLINE, with sections and subsections that cover the topics above. We recommend that you use the Outline/Heading feature of your word processing software in document preparation. It is expected that you will organize the document into numbered and named sections. It is best practice today, for technical and management documents, to use a "decimal" outline numbering scheme (1., 1.1, etc.) as opposed to the older Roman Numeral numbering approach.

With the assignment of team members and a team leader, the groups should use the most appropriate means for communication and collaboration. The Groups Space [1] can be used for Group Discussion and file sharing.  Teams are also welcome to use other collaboration tools such as:

• email communication with attachments,
• psu.zoom.us [2] - (Penn State now supports zoom.us as a video conferencing tool),
• Skype (person-to-person or group calls),
• Google Docs allowing joint revision of documents,
• the "Conferences" tool, and
• social media tools.

The Quality Management Plan should be from about 3000 to 4500 words in length. As is the case for all written assignments, the word count is a target to give you an idea about the level of detail expected. As a general rule, it is best to keep it concise and as brief as possible while still covering the necessary topics. No points will be deducted for submittals if they exceed the maximum word count by a small amount.

Refer to the grading rubric below for guidelines on expected content and format.

Submitting the Assignment Submittal and Grading

View specific directions for Submitting Assignment #6. See Canvas Calendar for submittal date. The grading information and rubric is below.

This assignment is worth 70 points. The points awarded from the Instructor’s grading of this Assignment will be given to all members of the team. 

The instructor may deduct points if the Assignment is turned in late, unless a late submittal has been approved by the Instructor prior to the Assignment submittal date.

Assignment #6 Grading Rubric

Grading Category	Basis for Scoring	Total Possible Points
A. Inclusion of Required Content	Inclusion of required content elements described in Assignment instructions and instructor directions (including cover page and table of contents). Extent to which the required topics and content of each assignment element is covered and explained.	18
B. Overall Document Organization	Effectiveness of document organization including section and subsection arrangement. Logical order and progression of content allowing reader to easily follow discussion. Properly placed tables and figures (with names and numbers) with specific text reference to all figures and tables. Existence of redundant content.	10
C. Quality/ Clarity of Writing	Writing quality and clarity refers to how well and effectively words and sentences convey meaning relative to the required topics for this assignment. Specifically, this covers:   Inclusion of a statement of purpose (relative to the assignment objective) and introduction that sets context and necessary background for rest of document. Effectiveness in choice of words and phrases that provide clear and understandable content for reader. Quality of sentence construction and use of proper grammar and syntax. Inclusion of appropriate content, terms, and methods from course readings (Canvas and book reading assignments). Level to which the writing is concise, to the point, with appropriate number of words to convey meaning. Correctness of spelling.	28
D. Format Quality	Grading evaluates how well the document formatting helps convey content and meaning to the reader and supports efficient flow and navigation for the reader. Important format parameters include:   Choice of fonts (type, style, size, colors for headings, document body, table content, table and figure headings, etc.). Cover page format that includes the required content with a layout and use of font formatting that is consistent with provided guidelines. Document footer text and page number content and font formatting. Use of numbering for sections and subsections. Spacing of text content in body and tables. Table format covering: borders; font type, style and size; text spacing and placement; column width and row height; use of shading; etc. Figure formatting covering all factors in the placement, use of colors, symbolization, spacing, etc. of graphic elements and annotation that contribute to readability and visual quality. Bullet point list format and spacing consistent and easy to interpret bulleted entries. Overall vertical and horizontal spacing (line spacing, indents, etc.). Page breaking in a manner that avoids disruption of content. Overall consistency of format throughout document.	14