The essence of the quality approach in Prince2 is 'fitness for purpose', achieved through combining the customer's quality expectations, and the means to achieve them, with the existing quality policy, processes and procedures of the organisation into a Quality Plan which will set out the project's approach to quality. The approach is based on four elements:
- A quality system, comprising an organisation structure, processes and procedures, which may exist on both customer and supplier side of the project. One or other can be chosen as the basis for the project quality plan, or a combination of the two.
- A Quality Assurance (QA) function which creates and maintains the quality system, for example an internal QA department, and which monitors the implementation of a project's quality plan.
- Quality Planning, based on understanding of the customer's quality expectations in Starting Up a Project, and a Quality Plan produced as the first step in Initiating a Project. The quality plan produced here will inform the planning of the project from that point on.
- Quality Control, which is the means by which prpoducts are checked for compliance to their product descriptions, the plans for which are elaborated when constructing the detailed stage plans.
