Meeting or exceeding requirements, on the other hand, is not part of project quality management. According to
the PMBOK® Guide, quality is “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfill requirements.” The
project manager and project management team have a special responsibility to balance quality and grade (a
category or rank assigned to products or services having the same functional use but different technical
characteristics) to ensure that quality expectations are met. This means that it might be possible and reasonable
to have a quality, low-grade product, but it is never acceptable to have a low-quality product.