Use and impact of quality management principles and tools on project success

Abstract

Project became an adequate solution for achieving different goals of a company, thus its successful realization is of great importance. On the other side, quality is a phenomenon wanted to be acquired in order to achieve customer satisfaction and profitability. Although these two fields of research were developing parallely, they rest on the same principles. The goal of this research was to determine the link between quality management and project management in companies on Serbian market, meaning the influence of quality management principles on project success and level of usage of quality management tools. The results of this empirical research suggest that the quality management principles of continuous process improvement, fact based management, leadership, continuous improvement of employee performance and customer satisfaction have a significant positive impact on project success, while simpler quality management tools are in use more than the more complex ones. Project success should not be measured solely on the old success criteria of time, cost and quality, yet more important criteria are alignment of the project's goals with the company's goals and the fulfillment of user requirements.