Establish and maintain definitions of measures to be included in the organization’s process performance analyses.

Refer to the Measurement and Analysis process area for more information about specifying measures.

Example Work Products

1.    Definitions of selected measures of process performance with rationale for their selection including traceability to selected processes or subprocesses

Subpractices

1.    Select measures that reflect appropriate attributes of the selected processes or subprocesses to provide insight into the organization’s quality and process performance.

It is often helpful to define multiple measures for a process or subprocess to understand the impact of changes to the process and avoid sub-optimization. Also, it is often helpful to establish measures for both product and process attributes for the selected process and subprocess, as well as its inputs, outputs, and resources (including people and the skill they bring) consumed.

The Goal Question Metric paradigm is an approach that can be used to select measures that provide insight into the organization’s quality and process performance objectives. It is often useful to analyze how these quality and process performance objectives can be achieved based on an understanding of process performance provided by the selected measures.

2.    Establish operational definitions for the selected measures.

Refer to the Measurement and Analysis process area for more information about specifying measures.

3.    Incorporate selected measures into the organization’s set of common measures.

Refer to the Organizational Process Definition process area for more information about establishing organizational process assets.

4.    Revise the set of measures as necessary.

Measures are periodically evaluated for their continued usefulness and ability to indicate process effectiveness.