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 customer’s quality expectations

The customer’s quality expectations are a statement about the quality expected from the project product.
They are defined and agreed early in the Starting up a Project process.

The expectations are captured in discussions with the customer and then refined for inclusion in the Project Product Description.

To avoid misinterpretations and inaccurate assumptions about the project’s quality requirements, the customer’s quality expectations should cover:

• The key quality requirements for the project product
• Any standards and processes that will need to be applied to achieve the specified quality requirements, including the extent to which the customer’s and/or supplier’s quality management system should be used
• Any measurements that may be useful to assess whether the project product meets the quality requirements (for example, existing customer satisfaction measures).

The key quality requirements will drive the choice of solution and, in turn, influence the time, cost, scope, risk and benefit performance targets of the project.

Examples of quality expectation

The quality expectation for a water pump in a remote village is that it is robust enough to ‘last a lifetime’, whereas because the oil pump in a racing car needs to be as light as possible, it may only need to last the duration of one race.

The customer’s quality expectations are often expressed in broad terms as a means to gain common understanding of general quality requirements.
They are then used to identify more detailed acceptance criteria, which should be specific and precise.

Where possible, the customer’s quality expectations should be prioritized as they will be used as inputs to define quality tolerances for the project’s products.

The customer’s quality expectations should be reviewed at the end of each management stage in case any external factors have changed them.

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