Plan and Optimize Quality

Quality management splits into three tested activities: planning (defining the quality standards and metrics), managing/assurance (auditing the process to ensure standards will be met), and control (inspecting the actual deliverables against those standards). Confusing "assurance" (process-focused, proactive) with "control" (product-focused, often reactive) is one of the most common exam traps.

Cost of quality has two buckets: cost of conformance (prevention costs + appraisal costs — training, testing, audits) and cost of nonconformance (internal failure costs + external failure costs — rework, warranty claims, reputational damage). PMI's philosophy: prevention is cheaper than inspection, and inspection is cheaper than fixing a failure the customer found.

Study focus: know the seven basic quality tools by sight — cause-and-effect (fishbone) diagrams, control charts, checksheets, Pareto charts (the 80/20 rule), histograms, scatter diagrams, and flowcharts — the exam sometimes shows a diagram and asks you to name it or interpret it.