Put quality back in the iron triangle

In mature project management sectors, such as IT, energy and construction, quality management seems to ‘just happen’. The project manager has people to ‘do it to the project’ so building capability to ‘do it yourself’ is never a priority. In less mature project management sectors, quality management ‘just doesn’t happen’. Perhaps because the quality management professionals within the organisation whilst, rightly, focusing on the things that need to happen to assure and control quality for ‘business as usual’ have not positioned themselves to be concerned about assuring and controlling quality for change initiatives. Or perhaps it is because the quality management discipline has allowed itself to be ‘shot in the foot’ by blind and unprofessional reliance on standards such as ISO9000 which has encouraged the average project manager to believe that project quality management is about complying with procedures.