Qt Creator project wizards create projects that are configured to use qmake. Most of the instructions in this manual apply to using qmake.
CMake is an alternative to qmake for automating the generation of build configurations.
Qt Build Suite (Qbs) is a new build tool for Qt. It is an all-in-one tool that generates a build graph from a high-level project description (like qmake or CMake do) and executes the commands in the low-level build graph (like make does). Qbs is still experimental, but you can use it to build Qt Creator, for example.
Qt Creator can open projects that use the Autotools build system. You can build and run the projects directly from Qt Creator.
Qt Creator supports generic projects, so you can import existing projects that do not use qmake or CMake. This enables you to use Qt Creator as a code editor and to fully control the steps and commands used to build the project.