Enhancement Request Trend
This guideline helps measure the trend of enhancement requests.
Main Description

Overview

The objective of this metric is to monitor the trend of enhancement requests received, approved, and closed during the project lifecycle. Generally, the feedback is received from the various stakeholders as requests. This metric also helps you adjust the project plan and details, such as the iteration plan, according to the number of enhancement requests. 

Measurement Method

  • Total number of submitted enhancement requests
  • Total number of approved enhancement requests
  • Total number of resolved enhancement requests 

Measurement Analysis

When the enhancement request has been submitted, it may or may not be approved, because approving all of the enhancement requests can affect the project schedule. You need to investigate the criticality of implementing the request and the impact on the project schedule if you were to approve the request. 

The enhancement request trend helps you observe the total number of enhancement requests, plus how many of them are approved and closed, to help the team adjust the plans. A high number of enhancement requests can also indicate that there is a high risk of requirement churn or that there may be issues with the understanding of project requirements among stakeholders. If most of enhancement requests are defects, you may have a problem with project quality and need to do detailed analysis of the problem.

Use the trend chart to show the trends of enhancement requests over time. The following graph shows a sample of enhancement request trend monitoring by iteration. It may be useful to categorize the requests by criticality (low, medium, high). 

Enhancement Request Trend

The total numbers of enhancement or change requests received, total number of requests approved, and total number of closed requests in an iteration are shown in this example. The idea is to identify the trend between total and approved, approved and closed, as well as total and closed.

More Information