Quality Management has three processes. Plan Quality Management identifies the quality requirements and standards the project must meet. Manage Quality (sometimes called Quality Assurance) audits the processes to ensure they will produce conforming outputs — it is process-focused. Control Quality monitors and records the results of quality activities against the requirements — it is product-focused, typically using inspection. Prevention keeps defects out of the process, while inspection keeps defects out of the customer's hands; prevention is cheaper in the long run.
The seven basic quality tools are cause-and-effect (Ishikawa or fishbone) diagrams for identifying potential root causes by category such as machine, method, material, measurement, man-power, and environment; flowcharts for showing process steps; check sheets for structured data collection; Pareto charts for prioritizing using the 80/20 rule (about 80% of problems come from 20% of causes); histograms for showing frequency distributions; control charts for plotting values against upper and lower control limits derived from the process mean plus or minus three standard deviations; and scatter diagrams for showing relationships between two variables. Six Sigma is a data-driven methodology targeting 3.4 defects per million opportunities and uses the DMAIC cycle: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. The Cost of Quality (COQ) is broken into prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs — all four are trade-off costs of meeting quality.
Resource Management contains six processes: Plan Resource Management, Estimate Activity Resources, Acquire Resources, Develop Team, Manage Team, and Control Resources. Resources include both physical resources (equipment, materials, facilities) and human resources (people with skills and capabilities). A Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) is a hierarchical representation of project resources by category and type. The RACI chart is a responsibility assignment matrix distinguishing Responsible (does the work), Accountable (ultimately answerable, exactly one per task), Consulted (provides input), and Informed (kept up to date). Acquiring resources obtains the people and equipment needed, developing the team improves competencies and interactions, and managing the team tracks performance, gives feedback, and handles changes.
Team development follows Tuckman's stages of Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. Ground rules are documented, agreed-upon norms of conduct created early in Develop Team; a team charter goes further by covering mission, values, expectations, communication, decision rules, and conflict resolution. PMI's preferred order for conflict resolution is Confront or Collaborate (problem-solve), then Compromise, then Smooth (emphasize agreement), then Force (win-lose), and finally Avoid or Withdraw. The power/interest grid plots stakeholders by power and interest to determine engagement strategy — high-power, high-interest stakeholders must be managed closely.