Domain 2 of 3 · Chapter 7 of 10

Planning and Optimizing Deliverable Quality

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Included in this chapter:

  • Plan quality before you build it
  • Cost of quality: pay for prevention, not failure
  • Assurance, control, and the validation that follows
  • Regulatory conformance and sustainability as criteria
  • Optimizing quality in adaptive delivery
  • Diagnose recurring defects: root cause, Pareto, control charts
  • Exam-pattern recognition

Cost of quality: the four categories

CategoryPreventionAppraisalInternal failureExternal failure
Conformance or nonconformanceCost of conformanceCost of conformanceCost of nonconformanceCost of nonconformance
What the money buysStopping defects before they occurFinding defects by inspecting and testingFixing defects caught inside the projectFixing defects the customer found
When it is incurredDuring planning and buildingDuring quality controlAfter control finds it, before deliveryAfter delivery, in the customer's hands
Relative cost of the defectLowestLowHigherHighest
Software exampleCoding standards, design review, trainingCode review, test runs, auditsReworking a failed test before releaseRecall, warranty fix, lost reputation

Decision tree

A quality signal appears: what is the right response?Deliverable under a mandatoryor regulatory standard?Do defects keep recurringfrom a common source?Point beyond a control limit,or a non-random run?Bake standard into metricsand criteria; verify in quality controlRoot cause analysis5 Whys / Ishikawa, then ParetoSpecial causeinvestigate and correct the processIn control, within criteriaquality control verifies, then validationYesNoYesNoYesNo
Cheat sheet

Cheat sheet

  • Agree acceptance criteria with stakeholders before building
  • Quality metrics turn standards into measurable checks
  • Cost of quality weighs conformance against failure costs
  • Preventing a defect costs less than fixing it after delivery
  • Assurance improves the process; control inspects the deliverable
  • Quality control verifies a deliverable before it is validated
  • Fold mandatory regulatory standards into the quality criteria
  • Meeting a mandatory standard is required, not gold-plating
  • A shared definition of done gates every increment
  • Testing within each iteration prevents a defect pile-up
  • Include sustainability among the deliverable's quality criteria
  • Weigh whole-lifecycle cost in quality trade-offs
  • Recurring defects call for root-cause analysis, not more inspection
  • Control charts separate a stable process from one needing intervention

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References

  1. PMP Examination Content Outline (January 2026)
  2. Responsibility for Quality in a Project Blog
  3. Quality Management and its Key Concepts for Project Management Blog
  4. The Scrum Guide (2020) Whitepaper
  5. Quality in Project Management: A Practical Look at Chapter 8 Blog