Quantitative Project Management (QPM) (CMMI-DEV)

Introductory Notes

The Quantitative Project Management process area involves the following activities:

• Establishing and maintaining the project’s quality and process performance objectives
• Composing a defined process for the project to help to achieve the project's quality and process performance objectives
• Selecting subprocesses and attributes critical to understanding performance and that help to achieve the project’s quality and process performance objectives
• Selecting measures and analytic techniques to be used in quantitative management
• Monitoring the performance of selected subprocesses using statistical and other quantitative techniques
• Managing the project using statistical and other quantitative techniques to determine whether or not the project’s objectives for quality and process performance are being satisfied
• Performing root cause analysis of selected issues to address deficiencies in achieving the project’s quality and process performance objectives

Organizational process assets used to achieve high maturity, including quality and process performance objectives, selected processes, measures, baselines, and models, are established using organizational process performance processes and used in quantitative project management processes. The project can use organizational process performance processes to define additional objectives, measures, baselines, and models as needed to effectively analyze and manage performance. The measures, measurements, and other data resulting from quantitative project management processes are incorporated into the organizational process assets. In this way, the organization and its projects derive benefit from assets improved through use. The project’s defined process is a set of interrelated subprocesses that form an integrated and coherent process for the project. The Integrated Project Management practices describe establishing the project’s defined process by selecting and tailoring processes from the organization’s set of standard processes. (See the definition of “defined process” in the glossary.)

Quantitative Project Management practices, unlike Integrated Project Management practices, help you to develop a quantitative understanding of the expected performance of processes or subprocesses. This understanding is used as a basis for establishing the project’s defined process by evaluating alternative processes or subprocesses for the project and selecting the ones that will best achieve the quality and process performance objectives.

Establishing effective relationships with suppliers is also important to the successful implementation of this process area. Establishing effective relationships can involve establishing quality and process performance objectives for suppliers, determining the measures and analytic techniques to be used to gain insight into supplier progress and performance, and monitoring progress toward achieving those objectives. An essential element of quantitative management is having confidence in predictions (i.e., the ability to accurately predict the extent to which the project can fulfill its quality and process performance objectives). Subprocesses to be managed through the use of statistical and other quantitative techniques are chosen based on the needs for predictable process performance.

Another essential element of quantitative management is understanding the nature and extent of the variation experienced in process performance and recognizing when the project’s actual performance may not be adequate to achieve the project’s quality and process performance objectives. Thus, quantitative management includes statistical thinking and the correct use of a variety of statistical techniques. (See the definition of “quantitative management” in the glossary.)

Statistical and other quantitative techniques are used to develop an understanding of the actual performance or to predict the performance of processes. Such techniques can be applied at multiple levels, from a focus on individual subprocesses to analyses that span lifecycle phases, projects, and support functions. Non-statistical techniques provide a less rigorous but still useful set of approaches that together with statistical techniques help the project to understand whether or not quality and process performance objectives are being satisfied and to identify any needed corrective actions.

This process area applies to managing a project. Applying these concepts to managing other groups and functions can help to link different aspects of performance in the organization to provide a basis for balancing and reconciling competing priorities to address a broader set of business objectives.