Quality

• Introduction
  • Purpose
  • Quality defined
• The PRINCE2 approach
• Quality planning
  • Overview
  • The customers quality expectations
  • Acceptance criteria
  • The Project Product Description
  • The Quality Management Strategy
  • Product Descriptions
  • The Quality Register
• Quality control
  • Overview
  • Quality methods
  • Quality records
  • Approval records
  • Acceptance records
• Responsibilities

Key sections

• Introduction
• Business case
• Organization
• Quality
• Plans
• Risk
• Change
• Progress
• Introduction to processes
• Starting up a projectDirecting a project
• Initiating a project
• Controlling a stage
• Managing Product Delivery
• Managing a Stage Boundary
• Closing a Project
• Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment
• Directing Projects with PRINCE2

The PRINCE2® approach

Quality planning

The purpose of quality planning is to provide a secure basis for:

• Project Board agreement on the overall quality expectations, the products required with their associated quality criteria (including corporate and other standards to be observed), the means by which quality will be achieved and assessed and, ultimately, the acceptance criteria by which the project’s product will be judged
• Communicating these agreements unambiguously so that all the project stakeholders have a common understanding of what the project is setting out to achieve
• Control, i.e. establishing an effective baseline for the project’s quality controls (including the quality tolerances) and a secure means of achieving products that are fit for purpose.

When these aspects of planning are neglected, the people involved in the project may have conflicting views on the scope of the solution, on what constitutes a successful result, on the approach to be adopted, on the extent of the work required, on who should be involved, and on what their roles should be.

Quality planning comprises:

• Understanding the customer’s quality expectations (see the later section covering ‘The customer’s quality expectations’)
• Defining the project’s acceptance criteria (see the later section covering ‘Acceptance criteria’)
• Documenting the customer’s quality expectations and the project’s acceptance criteria in the Project Product Description (see the later section covering ‘The Quality Management Strategy’)
• Formulating a Quality Management Strategy (see the later section covering ‘Quality assurance’)
• Writing clear Product Descriptions containing quality criteria, quality tolerances, quality method and quality responsibilities (see the later section covering ‘Product Descriptions’)
• Setting up the Quality Register (see the later section covering ‘The Quality Register’).

PRINCE2® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.