How do we plan for Quality?

At the macro level we have a couple of documents that help us to effectively plan for quality. We have the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP) which identifies how I am judging whether the contractor is doing a good job with respect to execution of the Performance work Statement (PWS). Within the scope of the project we have the Quality Management Plan, which identifies the relationship between things like the Use Case Scenario and an Iteration Test Plan, or the RTM and an Integration Test Plan. These are generally really good.

The problem is that there are likely to be many items that are too detailed to be in a Test Plan or management plan that need to be of a certain level of quality for the project to be successful. We aren't going to create a separate Quality Assurance document for each one are we? No. But we can work to cement agreement on what "quality" means for these lower level things.

Lets take a look at a project plan.

Here you can see a project and the detailed lines for finishing the requirements phase and the first two quality assurance/ design sessions. So here you can see "Prepare for QAS - Create and send out Read-Ahead Package (RAP)". We're not going to be creating a separate document on measuring quality on that. I tried to be pretty clear in my work statement when it came to sending out a RAP but there is an opportunity here to be even more clear.

This next image displays the "Notes" field for a work package in the project plan.

Notice how I use this field to identify the details for exactly what I am looking for in this work package. Keep in mind I'm not writing a tome here. But I am creating objective measures for what I expect when it comes to that or any other work package in the plan. If we going to spend 4 or 8 hours on something, I want to know what we're going to get out of that effort.

I recommend using this notes field to capture the quality metrics for work packages on your plan.