Project Quality Plan

Purpose

The purpose of the Project Quality Plan is to define how the supplier intends to deliver products that meet the customer's quality expectations and the supplier's quality standards. 

Fitness for purpose checklist:

• Does the plan clearly define ways in which the customer's quality expectations will be met?
• Are the defined ways sufficient to achieve the required quality?
• Are responsibilities for quality defined up to a level that is independent of the project and project manager?
• Does the plan conform to the corporate quality policy?  

Composition:

The Project Quality Plan should contain:

• Customer quality expectations
• Acceptance criteria, a prioritised list of criteria for the final product(s) that must be met before the customer will accept the final product(s).
• Quality responsibilities, who is responsible for each of the aspect of quality of the final product(s)
• Reference to any standards that need to be met
• The quality-control and audit processes to be applied to project management
• Quality-control and audit process requirements for specialist work
• Change management procedures
• Configuration management plan
• Any tools to be used to ensure quality. Derivation
• Customers quality expectations and requirements
• Organisational or programme quality management system and standards
• Configuration management and change control requirements 

Notes:

The document will be part of the text in the Project Initiation Document.

The Project Owner/board is responsible for the quality of the end-product but may delegate some of the tasks to others, however, delegation to the project manager would be inappropriate as he is not independent of the project team.

The Project Manager is responsible for the quality of the development activities but some tasks may be delegated to other team members.

The Project Quality Plan will need to take account of any internal or external standards that are applicable to the project, e.g. ISO standards

Further information

Prince 2