ISO 10006:2003, Quality management systems – Guidelines for quality management in projects, is an international standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization.

ISO 10006:2003 gives guidance on the application of quality management in projects.

It is applicable to projects of varying complexity, small or large, of short or long duration, in different environments, and irrespective of the kind of product or process involved. This can necessitate some tailoring of the guidance to suit a particular project.

ISO 10006:2003 is not a guide to “project management” itself. Guidance on quality in project management processes is discussed in this International Standard. Guidance on quality in a project”s product-related processes, and on the “process approach”, is covered in ISO 9004. A new “Project Management – Guide to project Management” ISO 21500has been published in September 2012.

Since ISO 10006:2003 is a guidance document, it is not intended to be used for certification/registration purposes.

SO 10006, Quality management — Guidelines to quality in project management, claims to provide “guidance on quality system elements, concepts and practices for which the implementation is important to, and has an impact on, the achievement of quality in project management.” In our opinion, application of this document is more likely to have the opposite effect: if attention is given to the items identified in the standard at the expense of others critical to project management, the result could very well be a poorly managed and unnecessarily costly project that is compliant with the standard.

Strong words, perhaps, but let us look at some of guidance the standard provides, and you can draw your own conclusion.

First of all, ISO 10006 does seem to cover the right subjects — scope, cost, time, risk, and so on. In fact, it identifies virtually the same set of project management processes and knowledge areas as A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. Not much of a surprise since the ISO committee used a draft of that document as a key input during the development of their document. There are, however, some notable omissions:

• There are no quality management processes. By failing to include the quality management processes, ISO 10006 implies that these critical processes are outside the scope of project management. How does one ensure quality without quality management?
• There is no project execution process. Lots of planning processes, lots of controlling processes, but no place to actually do the work of the project. This omission regrettably reinforces the notion that project management is limited to planning and controlling.
• ISO 10006 limits its discussion of scope to developing “a description of the project product.” In doing so, it minimizes the importance of project scope, of defining the work of the project. Hardly a recipe for quality in project management.

Second, the document says that it is “not a guide to project management itself,” yet the level of detail provided and the phraseology used in most clauses and subclauses runs counter to this stated intent. There is much use of prescriptive terms such as “action should be taken,” decisions should be “formally documented,” “special attention should be given to,” or “particular attention should be given to.” This language creates a false impression of priorities for successful project management and raises the risk of misuse of the standard.