Project Quality Assurance is a tought necessity. While it would be better for an organization’s project management processes to be sound enough to do without additional checks and challenges, for Project Managers to have a bullet-proof toolset to prevent quality-related issues, this doesn’t seem to be the case at all times.

There is a flipside, however. It’s easy to formulate standards and requirements, and expect PMs to abide by them. The PM herself is controlled – documentation reviewed, milestone timeliness checked, risk completeness assessed etc. These standards have the tendency to change often once QA teams start to operate. It’s not enough to deliver – the “how” matters too. The caveat is that documentation is a secondary project management activity – producing docs does not equate the completion of a project and such “artefacts” are created by one PM sparringly throughout a given year. The PM is rarely an “expert” here. QA teams, on the other hand, specialize in the kinds of documents they review, plus they review them on a regular basis.

A Project Manager is tasked with making things happen, first and formost. A certain degree of formalization is often required to ensure standards are met, safeguarded by Quality Assurance. But it is well worth to consider supporting the PM rather than dinging him or her for non-compliance.