QUALITY CONTROL – by Hansel Doan

In this short video clip called “Fire Drill” from The Office, we can see that Dwight is setting things up to be hazardous. Now, the thought was nice because he wanted his coworkers to practice a fire drill. But—this is an incredibly dangerous and hazardous experiment that could have resulted in injuries and worse, death. He did not tell anybody about this experiment, nor did he show his coworkers and alert them of what was going to happen. Then, after everything was said and done and he “conducted” his experiment, most of his coworkers scrambled in panic and fear. Not only does this cause even worse situations, but this can also lead to confusion.

In this case, Dwight was the quality control gone bad, he did not stay within protocol of his company, he did not check with superiors, he did not communicate with coworkers, he lit things on fire, jammed doors, and lied to coworkers about a fire being in the other room without there actually being a fire in the other room; thus, Dwight caused quite a bit of panic and could have led to injury and even death, the worst-case scenario. Being able to control the quality of products and being able to make sure that things are communicated, and things are in control is a vital part of project management. Being able to control the quality of our product without having unexplained events or uncontrolled variables is an important part of the process of Project Management—even if things can be unexplainable or not thought of or planned. It’s still important to be able to control variables that have been already planned and thought of.