Quality planning

Quality planning (Plan Quality Management) is the process of identifying quality requirements and standards for the project and its deliverables, and documenting how the project will demonstrate compliance. It is done in the planning process group, in parallel with other planning, and answers: what quality is needed and how will we achieve it?

Inputs

Project management plan (scope baseline, schedule, cost), stakeholder register, risk register, requirements documentation, enterprise environmental factors (regulations, standards) and organisational process assets (quality policy, templates, lessons learned).

Tools and techniques

• Cost-benefit analysis of quality activities.
• Cost of quality: prevention, appraisal, internal and external failure costs.
• Seven basic quality tools: flowcharts, cause-and-effect, control charts, histograms, Pareto, scatter diagrams, check sheets.
• Benchmarking against best practices.
• Design of experiments.
• Statistical sampling.
• Meetings, brainstorming, and other quality planning tools.

Outputs

1. Quality management plan: standards, responsibilities, QA and QC activities.
2. Process improvement plan.
3. Quality metrics: operational definitions of what will be measured (e.g. defect density, response time).
4. Quality checklists.
5. Project document updates.

Requirements + Standards
   -> Quality planning -> QM plan, Metrics, Checklists
   -> used in QA and QC

Importance

• Quality is planned in, not inspected in.
• Reduces rework and cost of failure.
• Clarifies expectations and responsibilities.
• Aligns with customer needs.

Example: For an e-commerce site, quality planning sets page load time under 3 seconds, 99.5% uptime, fewer than 2 critical bugs per 1000 lines, and assigns testing responsibilities.