Establish the Organization’s Measurement Repository
Establish and maintain the organization’s measurement repository.
The repository contains both product and process measures that are related to the organization's set of standard processes. It also contains or refers to the information needed to understand and interpret the
measures and assess them for reasonableness and applicability. For example, the definitions of the measures are used to compare similar measures from different processes.
Typical Work Products
1. Definition of the common set of product and process measures for the organization's set of standard processes
2. Design of the organization’s measurement repository
3. Organization's measurement repository (i.e., the repository structure and support environment)
4. Organization’s measurement data
Subpractices
1. Determine the organization's needs for storing, retrieving, and analyzing measurements.
2. Define a common set of process and product measures for the organization's set of standard processes.
The measures in the common set are selected based on the organization's set of standard processes. The common set of measures may vary for different standard processes.
Operational definitions for the measures specify the procedures for collecting valid data and the point in the process where the data will be collected.
Examples of classes of commonly used measures include the following:
· Estimates of work product size (e.g., pages)
· Estimates of effort and cost (e.g., person hours)
· Actual measures of size, effort, and cost
· Quality measures (e.g., number of defects found, severity of defects)
· Peer review coverage
· Test coverage
· Reliability measures (e.g., mean time to failure)
3. Design and implement the measurement repository.
4. Specify the procedures for storing, updating, and retrieving measures.
5. Conduct peer reviews on the definitions of the common set of measures and the procedures for storing and retrieving measures.
6. Enter the specified measures into the repository.
7. Make the contents of the measurement repository available for use by the organization and projects as appropriate.
8. Revise the measurement repository, common set of measures, and procedures as the organization’s needs change.
Examples of when the common set of measures may need to be revised include the following:
· New processes are added
· Processes are revised and new product or process measures are needed
· Finer granularity of data is required
· Greater visibility into the process is required
· Measures are retired
