Influence of Quality Management Process on Success of Agribusiness Projects in Rwanda, A Case Study of Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support Project (PASP)

Projects are generally undertaken because they are part of the plans to meet organizational needs and charter to new levels of performance, therefore, project success requires an effective quality management process. The general objective of this study was to analyze the influence of quality management process on success of agribusiness projects in Rwanda by taking into consideration the case of Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support project in Southern province of Rwanda. The researcher adopted descriptive research design where quantitative methods of data collection and analysis were used. The study population included the project staff and beneficiaries of the Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support project in Southern province of Rwanda which is equal to 1184 people and 8 project staff. The study used a sample size of 120 respondents. Since data were collected from the questionnaires, the researcher scrutinized the completed research instruments to identify and minimize errors, incompleteness and gaps in the information obtained from the respondents. Having the cleaned data, the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software was used to analyze data where independent and dependent variables were grouped to determine if there is a relationship between them (correlation). Based on the information drawn from findings the researcher concluded that the influence of quality planning process on success of Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support project is significant. It was found out that the project could not succeed without a clear quality plan, the increase of one unit in quality planning influences the project success by.975 which prove a significant relationship between quality planning process and success project. This study demonstrated that there is a significant relationship between quality assurance process and success of Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support project. It showed that the increase of one unit in quality assurance would increase the success of Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support project by.693 units if other variables remain constant. Moreover the study concluded that quality assurance is a very important factor to the project success. The study demonstrated that there is a significant relationship between quality control process and success of Post-Harvest and Agribusiness Support project. If the researcher considers the level of significance which is 0.09, there is therefore a significant relationship between them because their p-value (0.000) is statistically significant at 9 % level of significance. The researcher recommends that project managers must put in place the quality management plans that serve as quality guidelines to ensure project success. Project managers and their project staff have improve their ways and methods of quality auditing and improve quality audit strategies so as to keep their projects on track and on expected quality. Given the fact that quality control is a very important factor for project success, the issues of identification of quality non-compliance and its effects, suggesting corrective and preventive actions, recommending quality improvement, validating procedure for fault elimination, reviewing the results of corrective actions and producing quality control reports should be taken with seriousness by all project actors especially by the quality control department.