Establish and maintain quantitative objectives for the process, which address quality and process performance, based on customer needs and business objectives.

The purpose of this generic practice is to determine and obtain agreement from relevant stakeholders about specific quantitative objectives for the process. These quantitative objectives can be expressed in terms of product quality, service quality, and process performance.

Refer to the Quantitative Project Management process area for information on how quantitative objectives are set for subprocesses of the project’s defined process.

The quantitative objectives may be specific to the process or they may be defined for a broader scope (e.g., for a set of processes). In the latter case, these quantitative objectives may be allocated to some of the included processes.

These quantitative objectives are criteria used to judge whether the products, services, and process performance will satisfy the customers, end users, organization management, and process implementers. These quantitative objectives go beyond the traditional end-product objectives. They also cover intermediate objectives that are used to manage the achievement of the objectives over time. They reflect, in part, the demonstrated performance of the organization’s set of standard processes. These quantitative objectives should be set to values that are likely to be achieved when the processes involved are stable and within their natural bounds.

Subpractices

1.    Establish the quantitative objectives that pertain to the process.

2.    Allocate the quantitative objectives to the process or its subprocesses.