IBM® Rational® Insight includes an Executive Quality dashboard "Out of the Box" (OOTB) that displays information
for these metrics:
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Defect density
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Defect backlog
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Defect repair latency
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Enhancement request backlog
The first three are further broken down by pre-shipment and post-shipment. This indicates how many defects are not
detected before the product is released.
Together, these charts give you a good overview of how effectively your organization manages quality assurance (QA).
They support such indications as:
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Increasing defect density may indicate problems with code development, QA procedures, or inadequate testing,
especially if the trend of the defects goes up before shipment and the trend continues after shipment.
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Not managing the defect a backlog could cause customer dissatisfaction and reduce the quality of the shipped
product.
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Long turnaround time for fixing defects can also contribute to a perceived quality problem.
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Timely delivery of new requirements keeps the product useful to your customers. It improves your customer
responsiveness image, yields a more competitive product, and can increase customer satisfaction. However, it can
also cause churn problems that delay product shipment, so you must evaluate the tradeoffs.
The sections that follow describe each of the four charts a bit more and show examples.
Defect Density
Defect Density is defined by defects per thousand lines of code and broken down according to severity. Generally, you
would expect the defect density to increase with project size. However, it should start to decrease over time,
especially for higher severity. The trends shown in the following chart should raise concerns, because density is not
decreasing much.
Defect backlog
The defect backlog is how many open defects are in the system, broken down by severity. This chart is similar to the
previous one, except that project size is not included. The curves should show the same trend though, with a decreasing
slope later in the project. The following chart does show this, and the late-December peak in critical defects should
be looked into further.
Defect repair latency
Defect repair latency is the turnaround time between when a defect is submitted to when it is resolved, broken down by
severity. Put another way, defect repair latency is the amount of time required to resolve reported defects. The upward
slopes in the following chart might indicate a problem, because the time required to resolve critical defects is
increasing.
Enhancement request backlog
The enhancement request backlog, according to priority (low, medium, high), indicates how the project team is meeting
requirements. Generally, the number of open requirements should decrease over time, as they are implemented. The
following chart shows that requirements (including high-priority ones) are increasing. This implies that more
requirements are being added to the project. It would be essential in this situation to look into why so many new
requirements are being introduced, how to control that situation, and how to effectively deal with them.
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