Quality plans were absent from any of my projects last year.
Shocked?
The project teams delivered high-quality results on time and within budget. We didn’t achieve this without quality plans.
A quality plan is a document that defines what quality means for a project and how it will achieve it. This could include peer reviews, audits, peer review, or other methods that ensure the products are fit for their intended purpose. PRINCE2(r), recommends quality plans.
A document doesn’t make you deliver quality results. Even if you have the best quality plan, deliverables may not be what the customer expected.
Instead, work with customers
We worked closely with customers on my quality plan-free projects. We listened to their needs and acted accordingly. We worked with them to help understand when we couldn’t do it and why. We also worked with suppliers and challenged them when they didn’t meet our standards.
Yes, we did deliver items that weren’t up to our standards. However, a quality plan would not have made any difference. We did everything we could to make sure that we did a good job.
Quality plans are, in my opinion, a waste of paper. I know that not all people will agree with me. I also know that not everyone will agree with me.
Quality attitude
Quality is an attitude. Quality is not a matter of writing a few pages about the meaning of quality to this project. As part of the project deliverables, quality should be something we instinctively manage. We don’t need to be told how to do our jobs correctly and produce a quality, fit-for purpose outcome.
If you don’t understand what your customer wants, something’s wrong. If you don’t do your best to deliver what you promised, something’s wrong.
How can you approach quality planning?
