Planning Quality

A key success factor of any project is that the outcome and deliverables of the project conform to the customer's quality expectations. This will only happen if these expectations are both stated and agreed at the beginning of the project, together with the means of assessing achievement of these within the final deliverable.

Context

This process builds on the defined project approach and describes how quality will be achieved in the subsequent planning processes.

Process Description

The Project Quality Plan

The objectives of this process are to determine the quality required for the products of the project, and to plan the project's approach to quality (the Project Quality Plan) by:

	Establishing the quality regime which will apply to the project
	Defining the overall project quality criteria and assurance arrangements to be employed
	Establishing the approach to be used within the project for the control of changes.

In order to achieve these objectives, various steps have to be undertaken:

	Establish links to any corporate quality assurance function and ensure that all project quality activities support, and are supported by, this function. This may include assigning a quality assurance role for the project
	Establish any quality assurance needs for the project management products and activities, especially meeting the needs of the Quality Management System where these are applicable
	Establish the means by which overall success of the project's ultimate products or outcomes is to be measured, and prioritise them
	Identify quality responsibilities both within, and external to, the project
	Identify the quality control techniques and procedures to be employed during the conduct of the project
	Establish the Configuration Management and change control approaches to be adopted, including:
	Responsibilities Procedures Documentation.

See the chapters on Quality in a project environment, Change Control and Configuration Management for further information on the above aspects.

Where the project is part of a programme, the Project Directive passed down from the programme may have included statements about quality planning. This would form the basis of the Project Quality Plan. If there is any inconsistency between the desired Project Quality Plan and what is contained within the Project Directive, this must be resolved with programme management. Where the quality plans of the programme and project are identical or very similar, the quality plan of the programme should be referenced with only variations documented.

Responsibilities

The Project Manager is responsible, assisted by those with project assurance responsibilities, particularly those connected to business assurance. Information Needs

Management information	Usage	Explanation
Project Directive	Input	This document should contain the overall approach to quality and the top-level project quality criteria. These are refined and expanded during this process
Customer and Supplier QMS	Input	Standards with which projects must comply
Project Approach	Input	To establish the most appropriate approach to quality, there is a need to know how the project's work is to be approached as this could have a fundamental effect on the methods and resources used
Project Quality Plan	Output	This will contain the results of Planning Quality and will be an element of the Project Foundation Document output from Project Kick Off

Key Criteria

	Have all quality standards associated with the project's area of impact been identified and considered?
	Have all those, and only those, standards relevant to the successful outcome of the project been included?
	Are the approaches to assuring quality for the project appropriate in the light of the standards selected?
	Are the quality criteria measurable or assessable by the quality control mechanisms identified?
	Are the change control and quality assurance methods appropriate for the scale, complexity and risk exposure of the project?
	How will quality assurance be provided on projects where the Project Manager is not technically qualified?
	Will 'prepared by the Supplier and checked by the Customer' be a sufficient quality criterion?