Plan Quality Management

Identifies the quality requirements and standards for the project and its deliverables and documents how they will be met, producing the quality management plan and metrics. It defines what good looks like.

Process Group Planning Knowledge Area Project Quality Management

Plan Quality Management decides which quality standards apply and how the project will satisfy them — both the quality of deliverables and the quality of the processes producing them. It produces the quality management plan and concrete, measurable quality metrics that make good enough objective.

Plan Quality Management: key inputs and outputs — The key inputs feeding Plan Quality Management and the deliverables it produces — full ITTOs are listed below.

The emphasis is on building quality in and prevention over inspection, weighing the cost of quality (prevention and appraisal) against the cost of poor quality (rework and failures). The acceptance criteria defined here drive later validation and control.

Common pitfalls. Vague quality goals with no measurable metrics; planning to inspect quality in at the end rather than build it in; gold-plating beyond what stakeholders need; and standards copied from elsewhere that don’t fit the project.

Inputs, Tools & Techniques, and Outputs

Inputs

Project charter
Project management plan
Project documents
Enterprise environmental factors
Organizational process assets

Tools & Techniques

Expert judgment
Data gathering
Data analysis
Decision making
Data representation
Test and inspection planning
Meetings

Outputs

Quality management plan
Quality metrics
Project management plan updates
Project documents updates