Glossary

  • cost of conformance – The cost of good quality, which includes the cost of preventing quality defects as well as the cost of appraising or detecting defects in the project deliverables or processes.
  • cost of nonconformance – The cost of poor quality, which is a result of quality failures – both during and after the project.
  • cost of quality – The cost of delivering on the quality requirements of the project. The cost of quality, including the costs of conformance and the costs of nonconformance extend beyond the project and accrue over the life of the product of the project.
  • gold plating – Adding functionality that exceed a project's requirements, "possibly even beyond what is practical or reasonable for the effort".
  • quality – The features of a product or project that bear on its fitness for use – that is, its ability to meet the requirements of the customer; another component of quality is freedom from deficiencies.
  • quality function deployment (QFD) – A technique that helps organizations translate the product attributes the customer wants into tangible, measurable requirements that the project team can deliver. QFD, which is also known as voice of the customer, makes use of a product planning matrix, commonly referred to as the House of Quality, as well as technical and competitive benchmarking to establish target values for each product design requirement.
  • Taguchi loss function – A measure of "the cost of quality as a function of deviation from the standard".