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

Acceptance criteria

The project’s acceptance criteria form a prioritized list of measurable definitions of the attributes required for a set of products to be acceptable to key stakeholders.
Examples are ease of use, ease of support, ease of maintenance, appearance, major functions, development costs, running costs, capacity, availability, reliability, security, accuracy, and performance.

Acceptance criteria should be prioritized as this helps if there has to be a trade-off between some criteria – high quality, early delivery and low cost, for example, may not be compatible and one of them may need to be sacrificed in order to achieve the other two.

Each acceptance criterion is rated as either Must have, Should have, Could have or Won’t have for now (MoSCoW).

All the ‘Must have’ and ‘Should have’ acceptance criteria should be mutually achievable.

When the project can demonstrate that all the acceptance criteria have been met, the project’s obligations are fulfilled and the project can be closed.
The acceptance criteria should be agreed between the customer and supplier during the Starting up a Project process and documented as part of the Project Product Description.
It is important to recognize that little may be understood about the project’s products at this early point.

Consequently, it is often the case that acceptance criteria will be refined and agreed during the Initiating a Project process and reviewed at the end of each management stage. Once finalized in the Project Product Description, acceptance criteria are subject to change control and can only be changed with the approval of the Project Board.

In considering acceptance criteria, it is useful to select proxy measures that will be accurate and reliable indicators of whether benefits will subsequently be achieved.

If a customer’s quality expectation for a water pump is that it ‘lasts a lifetime’, the acceptance criteria should focus on those measures that provide sufficient indication or confidence that the pump is capable of lasting a lifetime (defined as a specific number of years). This may include complying with certain engineering standards relating to product durability.

Identifying the acceptance methods is crucial because they address the question: how do we prove whether and when the project product has been completed and is it acceptable to the customer?

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