Project Management: Can Project Quality

Project management: Can project quality management help with project scope management, project time management, and project cost management? If it can, how does it help? If it cannot, why not?

One of the key issues for project quality management in today's cost-conscious marketplace is that of cost containment. A quality project is not a project that is over budget and makes inefficient use of company resources, including time as well as money and labor. The scope of the project must be realistic, given the budget and timetable to ensure that the project of quality and value to the client. Else the project objective is merely the beautiful design of a beautiful mind, with no ability to do constructive work for the company.

Therefore even if he or she is not specifically given the task of budgeting, a good project manager with quality project management in his or her mind must still embark upon a project's conceptual design with a clear budget and a scope that fits within a cost frame and a realistic time table. He or she must also set realistic and immediate goals upon a timetable to not incur undue cost to the client, as well as to estimate the level of effort required by all members of the team.

If management feels unduly pressed for time and issues poorly written requirements regarding the project design, the project manager must find a way to rewrite those specifications in a realistic fashion to ensure that an effective, quality product is produced. (Davis, 2004) It is also crucial that project management have specifications that can be tested to meet definable standards of quality or the project will be a likely source of conflict. Ultimately, achieving a specific goal of quality, within a specific time limit and according to a certain standard is the point of the process of project development, not simply to meet a time goal, nor to meet a budget, nor to execute a design perfectly. (LASER, 2004) The ideal of quality is that all such goals must be commensurate.