Conformance work is performed to compensate for the imperfections present within the organization or project management task. These imperfections prevent the organization from completing all planned activities during the first attempt of doing the work.
In any type of projects, problems may arise particularly during the planning, executing, controlling and monitoring stages. Conformance work is crucial because it reviews the cost of quality (CoQ) that may arise during different problems like first time work. It also consists of actions related to both inspection and prevention.
Conformance work is also necessary for quality assurance especially in the cost of the quality framework. It ensures that consequences of errors are mitigated by inspecting for possible risks and implementing strategies that can prevent the risks from escalating. Just like conformance, the concept of conformance work also revolves around following an acceptable tolerance range.
There are a lot of situations that require project managers to perform conformance work within a project management plan. For instance, the temporary nature of the project may lead the stakeholders to make a lot of changes–and in turn, errors. Conformance work is necessary to prevent any defects caused by the changes and also to mitigate the costs of the error. This can be done by inspecting the non-conforming units.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.