Quality Expectations and Acceptance Criteria

 

The customer’s quality expectations are gathered during discussion with the customer in the Starting Up a Project process and then further refined and included in the Project Product Description.  

 

These expectations must include the key quality requirements for the project product, standards and processes that will need to be applied, and any useful measurements to ensure the project product meets quality requirements.

 

The customer’s quality expectations will have a huge impact on the Project Plan as they will influence the choice of solution leading to setting the project timeframe, the project budget, the scope of the project products, the amount of aggregated risk and ultimately the benefit performance targets.

 

Project quality expectations are normally expressed in broad terms to garner a common understanding amongst the key stakeholders, but are then refined and used to identify more detailed acceptance criteria which of course should be more precise and specific.  

 

These quality expectations should be prioritised as this will assist in defining quality tolerances.  They should also be reviewed at the end of each management stage to check whether or not they need to be refined or modified as a result of external factors.

 

The project’s acceptance criteria should be a complete prioritised list of measurable definitions of the attributes that the project’s products must have in order to be acceptable to the key stakeholders.  These criteria may be measured in many aspects ranging from ease-of-use, ease of maintenance, major functions, costs, reliability or even security.

 

The acceptance methods must be established and agreed because they will prove whether and when the project product has been completed and is acceptable to the customer.

 

PRINCE2 suggests the MoSCoW method of prioritization, Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, or Won’t Have for now. Before the project can be closed all of the acceptance criteria must be demonstrated that they have been met.  

 

It is important that the acceptance criteria should be agreed between the customer and supplier during the Starting Up a Project process and documented within the Project Product Description.  It is likely that the acceptance criteria will be further refined during the Initiating a Project process and be reviewed at the end of each management stage.

 

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