5 Use of product quality measures

What this heading covers

The three headings are a sequence. Clause 5.1 is called the requirement of this document to be applied, which suggests the draft says what applying it means rather than leaving it to taste. Clause 5.2 is product quality measurement concepts, which is where the quality property, the quality measure element and the measurement function are put to work. Clause 5.3 is the approach to quality measurement, which is where a team would find the guidance on selecting measures, setting targets and reading results. The public text does not carry the three subclauses, so this page describes the shape and the decisions they force, and marks each as our reading rather than the draft wording.

Record position: clause page 5 of 6. The heading is public; the text is not.

What the heading asks of a team

What to put in place before publication

1. Write a one page measurement plan that names the product, the characteristics, the measures, the lifecycle stage and the target values.
2. Record why each measure was selected, in one line, so the plan can be defended when the result is challenged.
3. State how a result will be read: against a target, against a baseline, or as a trend, and who decides.
4. Name the person accountable for the programme and the person who signs a published result.
5. Set a review date for the plan, and a trigger for revising it when the model or the product changes.

Where teams usually fall short

• A dashboard with no plan behind it, so nobody can say why a measure is there or what a good value would be.
• Target values copied from another product category, which the scope explicitly says they depend on.

What happens next

Clause 6 is the measure set itself: nine characteristics and forty measure families. The model page is the fastest way to see the whole shape before reading a family page.