Establish the Project’s Objectives

When establishing the project’s quality and process-performance objectives, it is often useful to think ahead about which processes from the organization’s set of standard processes will be included in the project’s defined process, and what the historical data indicates regarding their process performance. These considerations will help in establishing realistic objectives for the project. Later, as the project’s actual performance becomes known and more predictable, the objectives may need to be revised.

• Review the organization's objectives for quality and process performance. The intent of this review is to ensure that the project understands the broader business context in which the project will need to operate. The project’s objectives for quality and process performance are developed in the context of these overarching organizational objectives.
• Identify the quality and process performance needs and priorities of the customer, end users, and other relevant stakeholders. Examples of quality and process performance attributes for which needs and priorities might be identified include:
  • Functionality
  • Reliability
  • Maintainability
  • Usability
  • Duration
  • Predictability
  • Timeliness
  • Accuracy
• Identify how process performance is to be measured. Consider whether the measures established by the organization are adequate for assessing progress in fulfilling customer, end-user, and other stakeholder needs and priorities. It may be necessary to supplement these with additional measures.
• Define and document measurable quality and processperformance objectives for the project. Defining and documenting objectives for the project involve:
  • Incorporating the organization’s quality and process-performance objectives
  • Writing objectives that reflect the quality and process-performance needs and priorities of the customer, end users, and other stakeholders, and the way these objectives should be measured

  Examples of quality attributes for which objectives might be written include:

  • Mean time between failures
  • Critical resource utilization
  • Number and severity of defects in the released product
  • Number and severity of customer complaints concerning the provided service

  Examples of process performance attributes for which objectives might be written include:

  • Percentage of defects removed by product verification activities (perhaps by type of verification, such as peer reviews and testing)
  • Defect escape rates
  • Number and density of defects (by severity) found during the first year following product delivery (or start of service)
  • Cycle time
  • Percentage of rework time
• Derive interim objectives for each life-cycle phase, as appropriate, to monitor progress toward achieving the project’s objectives. An example of a method to predict future results of a process is the use of process performance models to predict the latent defects in the delivered product using interim measures of defects identified during product verification activities (e.g., peer reviews and testing).
• Resolve conflicts among the project’s quality and processperformance objectives (e.g., if one objective cannot be achieved without compromising another objective). Resolving conflicts involves:
  • Setting relative priorities for the objectives
  • Considering alternative objectives in light of long-term business strategies as well as short-term needs
  • Involving the customer, end users, senior management, project management, and other relevant stakeholders in the tradeoff decisions
  • Revising the objectives as necessary to reflect the results of the conflict resolution
• Establish traceability to the project’s quality and processperformance objectives from their sources. Examples of sources for objectives include:
  • Requirements
  • Organization's quality and process-performance objectives
  • Customer's quality and process-performance objectives
  • Business objectives
  • Discussions with customers and potential customers
  • Market surveys
  An example of a method to identify and trace these needs and priorities is Quality Function Deployment (QFD).
• Define and negotiate quality and process-performance objectives for suppliers.
• Revise the project’s quality and process-performance objectives as necessary.