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After a lighter week of London Marathon training last week due to a knee injury, I was looking forward to getting back to a good level of training this week.
In a nutshell, it was a week of mixed fortunes. In the 24th July blog (week 4) I set a criteria for the Monday 8 miler. This was to achieve an 8 minute per mile pace on that route, within 2 weeks. Well, I didn't meet the timescales for this - it kept finding itself on the backlog. But finally on Monday (2 weeks late) I managed to complete the route with an average pace of 7 minutes 53 seconds per mile.
This is an improvement of 47 seconds per mile since my first attempt 6 weeks ago, and an improvement of 9%. Very satisfying.
My only other run was on Thursday morning where I set out for a steady 20 miler. I met up with Coach at about 6 miles, and we ran the next 4 miles together. It was at that point that my knee injury returned, which was so frustrating.
Fortunately Coach had parked nearby and gave me a lift home, so it was just the 10 miles that was chalked up.
Measurable criteria is something that we should strive to define in projects. While intangible, subjective criteria is often the start point for recording initial expectations, it is important to agree measurable criteria where possible.
This will help to establish whether the project has delivered what was intended.
When looking at quality in projects, we typically use three steps:
Quality planning starts before the project begins, usually with an agreement of the customer expectations. These high-level expectations should be balanced against any constraints, such as time, money, or equipment, and then turned into measurable 'acceptance criteria' to enable objective decisions to be made during the project.
Quality control is the process of checking that the work and the outputs from the work meet the criteria that has been agreed in the quality planning step.
Quality Control will typically be done by a quality review team that has been identified and agreed during the quality planning step. Quality control may consist of many different techniques including sample testing, physical inspections and analysis, which could be performed during the development or as a final assessment on completion.
Quality Assurance is a role that typically existed in organisations, operating at corporate level to ensure that industry standards are applied. Quality assurance should audit the work of the project to ensure the project work and its outputs are compliant with the corporate and industry standards.
This is in contrast to the project role Project Assurance within the project management team which is responsible for ensuring that project management standards are followed.
At the beginning of my London Marathon training project I did set a few acceptance criteria, including:
1. Raise a minimum of £1,700 for Sense charity
2. Complete the London Marathon in under 4 hours
1. Complete the Monday 8 miler route at a pace of 8 minutes per mile
2. Run a minimum 400 miles during the training programme
3. Raise as much awareness for the work of Sense charity through social media, blogs and training runs
The week's training ended with 18 miles - the same as the previous week. Not a great week for distance covered, but with a few days rest I hope to be back to some good training next week.
In the blog next week, I'll be taking a look at teams and motivation.
Paul Bradley is a leading authority on project management methods and techniques. With over 25 years in the industry, Paul's knowledge and experience is respected by clients, accreditation bodies and training organisations globally. Paul has been the Managing Director of SPOCE since 2005, and is an accredited trainer for PRINCE2®, APM and AgilePM®. He is a regular presenter at seminars, providing information on project implementation drawn from his expertise as an accredited Axelos P3M3® Consultant. He has had two books published to enhance the training and use of PRINCE2®. Paul is also an active member and co founder of the renown RunFAR® initiative that raises both awareness and funds for charitable causes. The #RunFAR mission is to run for a reason and share a passion for running with others.
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