The reason we work to do quality planning up front is that it is most expensive to deal with problems if you find them late in the project. The best case is when you never inject the defects in the first place, then it doesn't cost anything to deal with them. Prevention is always better than inspection.

The project charter does several important things: it lays out the project requirements, describes an initial summary milestone schedule, documents the business case and identifies initial risks, assumptions and constraints. But the most important thing that a project charter does is that it identifies the project manager, and assigns him or her the authority necessary to get the job done.