Quality Management Strategies – 1

I’ve been thinking about how to put together a Quality Management Strategy for the programme I am shaping. Question is, where to start…

The MSP Manual says:

[…] used to define and establish the activities for managing quality across the programme

which sounds tautologous to me.

In Chapter 9 on Quality Management, a bit more detail appears:

The Quality Management Strategy defines what criteria will be used to assess quality, what quality activities will be incorporated into the management and delivery of the programme, who will be responsible for carrying out these activities, and how the programme will meet required audit and organisational standards for quality assurance and quality control.

In Appendix B there is more specific guidance on the contents:

Description of the quality assurance, review and control processes for the programme, covering:

• What will be subject to quality assurance, review and control, and the quality criteria to be applied.
• Who will undertake quality assurance, review and control activities
• What will trigger those activities (time-based, event-based or associated with risk occurrence)
• What actions will be taken depending on the results of quality checks
• Configuration management and change control procedures
• Defined responsibilities for quality management
• Information requirements to support quality management
• Procedures for use of support tools for quality management activities e.g. change control software
• Resource requirements for quality management

All of which will be very useful to describe the headings, but which doesn’t ask the fundamental question – why are we doing this? A later post…