Challenges

Quality improvement can create conflicting situations and could result in complications. Project team members may be disillusioned by the past failures. The past efforts at improvement may not have produced any results or at least not the results which the team has expected or considered to be worth the effort.

The team members or the external management members may believe wrongly that the improved quality costs more. They can focus on the short- term costs rather on the long-term profit which is a tough mind-set to break. But, this has to be broken. Focusing on the short-term cost and a belief that a better quality will cost more will have destructive effect on the project, on the product of the project, on the customer satisfaction and also on the organisation as a whole. The responsibility of the quality improvement can be assigned to the project team where the person responsible will have authority or the ability to take any effective action. The project manager is responsible for  the quality.  The quality improvement  is  system  oriented approach and has to be supported by the management. The employees are often concerned about the quality improvement because the improvement is a change. The resistance to change, the fear of the unknown, and comfort with status quo make quality improvement a challenging proposition of acceptance in organisations.