Manage Quality (quality assurance) turns the quality plan into action: auditing processes, analyzing data, and confirming the project is using the right processes to meet its quality goals. Unlike Control Quality, it focuses on the processes and overall confidence in quality, not on inspecting individual deliverables.
Audits and process analysis identify ineffective processes and improvement opportunities, which become change requests. It is everyone’s job, not just a QA department’s, and it aims to prevent defects rather than catch them late.
Common pitfalls. Confusing Manage Quality (process assurance) with Control Quality (deliverable inspection); audits that tick boxes without driving improvement; treating quality as a separate team’s responsibility; and ignoring the improvements audits reveal.
Inputs, Tools & Techniques, and Outputs
Inputs
- Project management plan
- Project documents
- Organizational process assets
Tools & Techniques
- Data gathering
- Data analysis
- Decision making
- Data representation
- Audits
- Design for X
- Problem solving
- Quality improvement methods
Outputs
- Quality reports
- Test and evaluation documents
- Change requests
- Project management plan updates
- Project documents updates
How This Process Connects
Every process hands artifacts to other processes. Follow the flow of this one:
Where its inputs come from
- Develop Project Management Planproduces: Project management plan
Where its outputs go
- Perform Integrated Change Controluses: Change requests
More in Project Quality Management
In the Domains & Principles View
The PMBOK® Guide frames this work through performance domains and principles:
In the Eighth Edition
This process describes the framework as set out in the Sixth and Seventh Editions. The Eighth Edition reorganized it into 6 principles, 7 performance domains and 40 processes.