Difficulty: Easy
Correct Answer: Quality planning, perform quality assurance, perform quality control
Explanation:
Introduction / Context:
Project Quality Management is the knowledge area that ensures the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It incorporates planning, assurance, and control activities to achieve both product quality and process quality. The PMBOK Guide describes three main processes within this area, and remembering them as a group is important for PMP exam questions that ask you to classify activities by knowledge area.
Given Data / Assumptions:
Concept / Approach:
In traditional PMBOK editions, Project Quality Management consists of quality planning, where the project team identifies quality requirements and documents how the project will demonstrate compliance; perform quality assurance, which audits quality requirements and control measurements to ensure appropriate standards and processes are used; and perform quality control, which monitors and records specific results to determine whether they comply with quality standards and to identify ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance. Together, these processes cover the planning and monitoring of quality across the project life cycle.
Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Recall that quality planning is part of the planning process group and defines quality standards and metrics for the project.
Step 2: Recognise that perform quality assurance is an executing process that focuses on process improvements and audits to ensure standards are followed.
Step 3: Identify perform quality control as a monitoring and controlling process that measures specific results and applies techniques such as inspection and control charts.
Step 4: Compare the options and select the one that lists these three processes together.
Step 5: Confirm that other options contain processes from scope, time, cost, or integration management rather than quality.
Verification / Alternative check:
A quick check of PMBOK style content for Project Quality Management shows chapters or sections explicitly titled Quality Planning, Perform Quality Assurance, and Perform Quality Control. These are distinct from the scope processes, the time processes like schedule development, and the cost processes. This confirms that the correct answer is the option listing the three quality processes together.
Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Option B lists scope processes, not quality processes. Option C groups cost management and resource planning activities. Option D includes time management processes. Option E lists integration processes related to chartering, planning, directing, and closing the project. None of these sets is specific to quality management.
Common Pitfalls:
One pitfall is to confuse quality control with scope verification, because both involve inspections; however, quality control checks whether deliverables meet quality standards, while scope verification checks whether the right deliverables were produced. Another pitfall is to overlook quality assurance, thinking that quality is only checked at the end, when in fact ongoing process audits are crucial. For exam purposes, keep in mind the trio of quality planning, perform quality assurance, and perform quality control as the core of Project Quality Management.
Final Answer:
The correct list of Project Quality Management processes is quality planning, perform quality assurance, and perform quality control.
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