Guide to Project Performance Management: Quality Management

Importance:
Quality Management in the project performance is crucial as it ensures that the end deliverables meet the stakeholder's requirements and expectations. It manages both the project and the product quality with continuous improvement methodologies. Poor quality can lead to time delays, cost overruns and reputational damage.

Definition:
Quality Management in Project Management refers to the processes and activities that determine the quality of a project. As per PMBOK Guide, it involves continuous process improvement, managing and controlling project and product quality and failure and risk management.

How it works:
Quality Management works in three steps: Quality Planning, Quality Assurance, and Quality Control. In Quality Planning, you determine what quality requirements must be met for project success. During Quality Assurance, you apply the planned, systematic activities to ensure that the project employs all processes needed to meet requirements. Lastly, in Quality Control, you monitor the project and product results to verify that they comply with the relevant quality standards.

Exam Tips:
Answering questions on Quality Management usually involves understanding scenarios and applying the principles of quality planning, assurance, and control. You should be able to distinguish between conformance (doing work right) and non-conformance (doing work wrong), and acknowledge that prevention (keeping errors out of the process) is more important than inspection (keeping errors out of the customer's hand). Lastly, remember quality is planned in, not inspected in.