In project management, “quality” refers to meeting or exceeding the expectations you establish with your client. If your deliverables meet or exceed expectations, they are high quality. If they don’t, they are low quality.
As a potential PMP credential holder, you will need to understand the difference between quality control and quality assurance for both the PMP exam and real-world project management. These processes are closely related and can be difficult to distinguish. Your experts at Project Management Academy have created this guide to help you understand their differences.
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First, let’s look at how PMI defines quality assurance (QA):
“The managerial processes that determine the organization, design, objectives, and resources, and that provide the project team, client, and shareholders with performance standards
and feedback on the project’s performance.”
Careful planning and review help prevent defects. Quality assurance emphasizes prevention over the inspection and Do It Right the First Time (DIRFT), meaning deliverables should be error-free from the start because it’s more costly to fix mistakes than to prevent them. This involves:
Quality assurance guarantees you meet or exceed standards and expectations in every stage of your project and its deliverables. It is proactive, preventative, and crucial to your project’s success.
Here’s how PMI defines quality control (QC):
“The technical processes that examine, analyze, and report the project’s progress and conformance with performance requirements.”
Quality control deals with identifying defects or mistakes in project deliverables to ensure everything the project team produces meets or exceeds requirements and expectations, including:
Quality control is reactive but takes place throughout the whole project. You will need to monitor project activities and deliverables as they are produced to ensure their correctness.
Quality assurance and quality control are closely related to project management processes. Quality control receives input from quality assurance to measure the quality of deliverables, while quality assurance receives feedback from quality control to improve methods and prevent future errors. Learn more about the difference between quality assurance and quality control for the PMP exam:
Quality assurance and quality control are closely linked so your team can strive for high-quality deliverables and continuous improvement in project processes. However, they are not interchangeable! Here are some key differences to help you distinguish between the two:
They have different objectives.
They focus on different aspects of the project.
They occur at different times during the project.
While quality assurance and quality control have some differences, they are complementary and beneficial to your project from kickoff to completion.
Quality assurance and quality control have many benefits for you, your team, and your clients:
In many ways, quality assurance and quality control are codependent for project success. Let’s look at examples of how they interact.
Suppose you are working on a software development project. Quality assurance includes developing standardized pieces of code, while quality control involves testing the code after it’s written. If any mistakes are found in the code during quality control, providing feedback to quality assurance will ensure the code is updated to prevent future errors.
In another example, your project may be creating products on an assembly line. Perform quality assurance by developing a plan, creating the assembly line, and training workers along the line. Quality control begins when the first product is created: checking for defects, logging mistakes, and rejecting any products not up to standard.
Are you ready to practice your understanding of quality control vs. quality assurance for the PMP exam? Test your knowledge with these example PMP exam questions. Answers below.
Question | A | B | C | D |
Your project management plan determines that you will have a budget for appraisal costs. You are performing quality control for one portion of your project deliverables. Which of the following tools will be most important here? | Audit | Process analysis | Cost of Quality | Inspection |
You are analyzing your project schedule and realize you have failed to include quality assurance activities. You know quality assurance is an important component of project management, and you want to make sure there are appropriate tasks inserted into the schedule. You decide that you will work with your stakeholders to define and schedule these activities. At which point(s) in the project should these activities be conducted? | At the starting of the planning phase | At regular intervals throughout the project life cycle | In the executing phase | Upon closure of the project |
1. D: Control Quality requires an inspection of the work results. While quality is planned into a project, inspections ensure the quality requirements were met.
2. B: Manage Quality (or Quality Assurance) activities should be performed throughout the project life cycle.