6 Product quality measures

What this heading covers

The contents is detailed enough to count. Nine characteristics each open with a General subclause, then a subclause for each measure family. Functional suitability has three families, performance efficiency three, compatibility two, interaction capability eight, reliability four, security six, maintainability five, flexibility four and safety five. That is forty families in total. The 25010 model carries forty-four subcharacteristics, so four model subcharacteristics have no separate measure-family heading in the draft: functional adaptability, environmental sustainability, user controllability and intervenability. Whether the General subclauses cover them is not public, and this record does not assume either way. It records the count, the gap and the question a buyer should put to the committee.

Record position: clause page 6 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. Build a measure index with one row per characteristic and one per family, so the team can see the forty families and mark the ones it uses.
2. Decide now how you will measure the four subcharacteristics without a family heading, and label the method as yours rather than the draft's.
3. Map every existing measure to a family, and put the unmapped ones in a separate list with a reason.
4. Mark which families are measured internally, from static product properties, and which externally, from behaviour in test or operation.
5. Give the index a version and a date, because the published edition will change it.

Where teams usually fall short

• A measure set built on the 2011 model with eight characteristics, reported beside a draft built on the 2023 model with nine.
• The four new subcharacteristics left out of the plan with no note, so a reader assumes they were considered and found unnecessary.

What happens next

Start with the model page for the nine characteristics, then open the family page for the property you are being asked about. Each family page names the QMEs that can feed a measure and the evidence to keep.