A key success factor of any project is that it delivers what the user expects and finds acceptable. This will only happen if these expectations are both stated and agreed at the beginning of the project, together with the standards to be used and the means of assessing their achievement. The purpose of the Quality Management Strategy is to ensure such agreements are captured and maintained.
PRINCE2 suggests the following actions for this process:
✔ Review the Project Product Description to understand the customer's quality expectations and to check that the project's acceptance criteria are sufficiently defined
✔ Review the Project Brief to understand whether any corporate or programme management strategies, standards or practices relating to quality management need to be applied by the project (in particular whether the customer and! or supplier has an existing quality management system that should be applied to aspects of the project)
✔ Seek lessons from similar previous projects, corporate or programme management, and external organizations related to quality management. Some of these may already have been captured in the Lessons Log
✔ Review the Risk Register and Issue Register for issues and risks associated with quality management
Define the Quality Management Strategy, including:
✔ The quality management procedure (e.g. quality planning, quality control, quality assurance)
✔ Tools and techniques that will be used
✔ Records that will be kept
✔ How the performance of the quality management procedure will be reported
✔ Timing of quality management activities
✔ The roles and responsibilities for quality management activities (check links to any corporate or programme quality assurance function and ensure that all project quality activities support, and are supported by, this function)
✔ Consult with Project Assurance to check that the proposed Quality Management Strategy meets the needs of the Project Board and/or corporate or programme management
✔ Create a Quality Register in readiness to record details of all quality activities
✔ If any new risks or issues are identified (or existing ones have changed), then update the Risk Register, Issue Register and/or Daily Log
✔ Seek Project Board approval for the Quality Management Strategy (although the Project Board may prefer to review it later as part of the Project Initiation Documentation).
