Quantitative Process Management (QPM)

Quantitative Process Management (QPM) aims to control the process performance (the actual output accomplished by following the software process) of the software project quantitatively. The quantitative process management establishes goals for the performance of the project’s software process. It involves measuring the performance of software process, analyzing these measurements, and making adjustments in maintaining the performance of the process. After the performance of the process is stable and within acceptable limits, the software process of the project and the associated measurements are established as a baseline. This results in controlling the performance of the software process quantitatively. The goals of quantitative process management are listed below.

1. To plan the activities for quantitative management
2. To control the process performance of the project’s defined software process quantitatively
3. To identify the process capability of the organization standard software process in quantitative terms.

For QPM to work effectively and efficiently, various entry and exit criteria are defined. These, along with the tasks involved, are shown in Table.

                                       Table Quantitative Process Management

After the outputs from the tasks are available, verification is done on the following basis.

1. Reviews with senior management and project management
2. Reviews/audits by software quality assurance
3. Measurement of the status of QPM activities.

The organization follows a written policy for evaluating and quantitatively controlling the performance of the software process of the project. For this, various steps are followed, which are listed below.

1. Each project implements a documented plan to bring the software process of the project under a quantitative control. The quantitative control refers to the quantitative technique, which is appropriate to analyze the software processes. It identifies a specific condition or a specific group of individuals performing in an unexpected manner.
2. The sensitive data related to an individual’s performance is protected and access to this data is controlled. The measurement data is used to evaluate the individuals who intentionally affect the correctness and usefulness of the reported data.