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Project Quality Management includes the processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It includes "all activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives, and responsibilities and implements them by means such as quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement, within the quality system" [1]. Figure 8-1 provides an overview of the following major project quality management processes:

	Quality Planning — identifying which quality standards are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them.
	Quality Assurance — evaluating overall project performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards.
	Quality Control — monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance.

  These processes interact with each other and with the processes in the other knowledge areas as well. Each process may involve effort from one or more individuals or groups of individuals based on the needs of the project. Each process generally occurs at least once in every project phase.
  Although the processes are presented here as discrete elements with well-defined interfaces, in practice they may overlap and interact in ways not detailed here. Process interactions are discussed in detail in Chapter 3, Project Management Processes.
  The basic approach to quality management described in this section is intended to be compatible with that of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as detailed in the ISO 9000 and 10000 series of standards and guidelines. This generalized approach should also be compatible with (a) proprietary approaches to quality management such as those recommended by Deming, Juran, Crosby, and others, and (b) nonproprietary approaches such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Continuous Improvement, and others.
  Project quality management must address both the management of the project and the product of the project. The generic term product is occasionally used, in literature regarding quality, to refer to both goods and services. Failure to meet quality requirements in either dimension can have serious negative consequences for any or all of the project stakeholders. For example:

   Meeting customer requirements by overworking the project team may produce negative consequences in the form of increased employee attrition.

   Meeting project schedule objectives by rushing planned quality inspections may produce negative consequences when errors go undetected.

  Quality is "the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs" [2]. Stated and implied needs are the inputs to developing project requirements. A critical aspect of quality management in the project context is the necessity to turn implied needs into requirements through project scope management, which is described in Chapter 5.
  The project management team must be careful not to confuse quality with grade. Grade is "a category or rank given to entities having the same functional use but different technical characteristics" [3]. Low quality is always a problem; low grade may not be. For example, a software product may be of high quality (no obvious bugs, readable manual) and low grade (a limited number of features), or of low quality (many bugs, poorly organized user documentation) and high grade (numerous features). Determining and delivering the required levels of both quality and grade are the responsibilities of the project manager and the project management team.
  The project management team should also be aware that modern quality management complements project management. For example, both disciplines recognize the importance of:

   Customer satisfaction—understanding, managing, and influencing needs so that customer expectations are met. This requires a combination of conformance to requirements (the project must produce what it said it would produce) and fitness for use (the product or service produced must satisfy real needs).

   Prevention over inspection—the cost of preventing mistakes is always much less than the cost of correcting them, as revealed by inspection.

   Management responsibility—success requires the participation of all members of the team, but it remains the responsibility of management to provide the resources needed to succeed.

   Processes within phases—the repeated plan-do-check-act cycle described by Deming and others is highly similar to the combination of phases and processes discussed in Chapter 3, Project Management Processes.

  In addition, quality improvement initiatives undertaken by the performing organization (e.g., TQM, Continuous Improvement, and others) can improve the quality of the project´s management as well as the quality of the project product.
  However, there is an important difference of which the project management team must be acutely aware—the temporary nature of the project means that investments in product quality improvement, especially defect prevention and appraisal, must often be borne by the performing organization since the project may not last long enough to reap the rewards.