The Quality Assurance Plan is an artifact that provides a clear view of how product, artifact, and process quality are to be assured. It contains the Review and Audit Plan, and references a number of other artifacts developed during the Inception phase. It is maintained throughout the project. 
Other Relationships:  Part Of Software Development Plan
Role:  Project Manager 
Optionality/Occurrence:  Optional. Developed during the Inception phase and updated at each major milestone.
Templates and Reports: 
  • Quality Assurance Plan

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    Examples:   
    UML Representation:  Not applicable.
    More Information:   
    Input to Activities:    Output from Activities:   

    Purpose To top of page

    The purpose of the Quality Assurance Plan is to provide a single point of reference on the topic of quality for the project. It is a process-oriented artifact and highlights those elements of the RUP that are the contributors to achievement of quality objectives. The Quality Assurance Plan will not contain details of the techniques, criteria, metrics, and so on, of the peer reviews and evaluations whose focus is product. It requires, as a matter of compliance with the RUP, the details of product quality evaluation to be provided in the Evaluation Plan section of the Software Development Plan, and in the Test Plan.

    Timing To top of page

    This artifact is developed during the Inception phase and is updated at each major milestone.

    Responsibility To top of page

    The Project Manager is responsible for ensuring the Quality Assurance Plan is created, appropriate, and acceptable for the project.

    Tailoring To top of page

    The Quality Assurance Plan contains information that may be covered to a greater or lesser extent by other plans.  The following approaches can be used to handle this potential overlap:

    • Reference the content in another plan.
    • Provide the overview in another plan and provide greater detail in this plan.  References from these other plans to the Quality Assurance Plan may also be useful.  This often works well on large projects with a separate organization responsible for quality assurance.
    • Tailor the document sections to cover only those areas that are not covered elsewhere.

    The following is a mapping of Quality Assurance Plan sections to artifacts that may contain complementary information:

    Quality Assurance Plan Section   Complementary Artifact  
    Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbreviations   Glossary  
    Management   Software Development Plan  
    Documentation   Development Case  
    Standards and Guidelines   Development Case  
    Metrics   Development Case, Measurement Plan  
    Review and Audit Plan   Development Case, Configuration Management Plan  
    Evaluation and Test   Development Case, Software Development Plan (Evaluation Plan), Test Plan  
    Problem Resolution and Corrective Action   Problem Resolution Plan  
    Tools, Techniques and Methodologies   Development Case, Software Development Plan (Methods, Tools and Techniques)  
    Configuration Management  Configuration Management Plan 
    Supplier and Subcontractor Controls  Software Development Plan (Subcontractor Management Plan, Infrastructure Plan)  
    Quality Records   Configuration Management Plan  
    Training   Software Development Plan  
    Risk Management   Risk Management Plan  

    Some projects may choose not to produce a Quality Assurance Plan and may cover any necessary information in these other plans.



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