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: 
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.



Rational Unified Process   2003.06.13