Defining project quality and its association to project cost

Defining project quality and its association to project cost management.
Quality on a project mainly emphasizes customer satisfaction. Proper management of
quality within a project assures customers satisfaction and meet the needs of the stakeholders
which are determined at the beginning of a project (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). In other
words, quality is perceived as the degree to which requirements are fulfilled for a set of
inherent characteristics.
For planning a project’s quality management, various tools and techniques are applied
based on the input from the stakeholders during the planning phase. The cost-benefit analysis
is measured for analysing the trade-offs while providing quality. Cost of Quality (COQ) is
another tool for conforming all the costs that are required for meeting the quality of the
project. Modern tools and quality management philosophies signify on preventing mistakes
instead of detecting them later as the cost of non-conformance become very high (Milosevic
& Martinelli, 2016). The major costs associated with quality are prevention costs, appraisal
costs and failure costs. Brainstorming is a technique which is applied for gathering
information by capturing multiple unfiltered ideas for later analysis. Force Field Analysis
(FFA) technique is an additional planning tool where ideas are analysed by grouping factors
based on pros and cons (Takanen, Demott, Miller & Kettunen, 2018). Further, the
enhancement of brainstorming, Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is useful in adding a
mechanism for ranking ideas. NGT functions by collecting inputs from stakeholders and
encourages the discussion of each input.
Due to the poor quality of a project, the cost involved increases. For example, if the
standards of quality are not met, the project needs to be reopened which means the cost will
double and the resources are also employed twice for the same project.