Quality Assurance vs Quality Control

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Designed to help those that are preparing to take the PMP or CAPM Certification Exam, each post within this series presents a comparison of common concepts that appear on the PMP and CAPM exams.

Quality Assurance vs Quality Control

Perform Quality Assurance and Perform Quality Control are two distinct processes within the Project Quality Management knowledge area. Quality Assurance is within the Executing Process Group and Quality Control is within the Monitor and Control Process Group.

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is an audit function that evaluates the actual project quality results against the planned or intended results to ensure that the appropriate processes are being employed by the project team.

“Assuring” quality implies ensuring the project quality requirements are being achieved

Quality Control

Quality control is the implementation of quality processes in order to achieve the project and product quality requirements.

“Controlling” quality implies implementing the appropriate quality steps and actions

QC vs QA Example

When your team members submit their status reports to you as project manager, you evaluate the information and verify that it is accurate before including it in your overall project performance report. The act of validating the information would be considered quality control. You are determining the quality of a project deliverable.

Upon compiling all of the project information into the project performance report, you evaluate the current results of the project against the project management plan, baselines, and objectives. The evaluation of the variances between the plan and the actuals would be considered quality assurance. You are determining the need for any process or procedural changes based on differences between the documented requirements and the actual project results.

Summary

While often confused, quality assurance and quality control are two distinct processes.

QC: controlling / validating the quality of the project outputs
QA: assuring the appropriate processes are being employed on the project based on the quality control results

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