GQM, the acronym for "Goal, Question, Metric", is an approach to metrics that was developed by Victor Basili of the University of Maryland, College Park and the Software Engineering Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Acronyms, initialisms, and alphabetisms are Abbreviations that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name A metric is a standard unit of measure such as Meter or Gram, or more generally part of a system of parameters or Systems of measurement, or a set of The University of Maryland College Park (often referred to as The University of Maryland UMD, UMCP or simply Maryland) is a public research The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA, ˈnæsə is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program The Goddard Space Flight Center ( GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight
GQM defines a measurement model on three levels:
- Conceptual level (goal)
- A goal is defined for an object for a variety of reasons, with respect to various models of quality, from various points of view and relative to a particular environment. Measurement is the process of estimating the magnitude of some attribute of an object such as its length or weight relative to some standard ( unit of measurement) such as A goal or objective consists of a projected state of affairs which a Person or a System plans or intends to achieve or bring about — a personal or
- Operational level (question)
- A set of questions is used to define models of the object of study and then focuses on that object to characterize the assessment or achievement of a specific goal.
- Quantitative level (metric)
- A set of metrics, based on the models, is associated with every question in order to answer it in a measurable way.
The open literature typically describes GQM in terms of a six-step process where the first three steps are about using business goals to drive the identification of the right metrics and the last three steps are about gathering the measurement data and making effective use of the measurement results to drive decision making and improvements. Decision making can be regarded as an outcome of mental processes ( cognitive process) leading to the selection of a course of action among several alternatives Basili described his six-step GQM process as follows:
- Develop a set of corporate, division and project business goals and associated measurement goals for productivity and quality
- Generate questions (based on models) that define those goals as completely as possible in a quantifiable way
- Specify the measures needed to be collected to answer those questions and track process and product conformance to the goals
- Develop mechanisms for data collection
- Collect, validate and analyze the data in real time to provide feedback to projects for corrective action
- Analyze the data in a post mortem fashion to assess conformance to the goals and to make recommendations for future improvements
GQM templates are a structured way of specifying goals. Productivity in Economics refers to measures of output from production processes per unit of input In the vernacular quality can mean a high degree of excellence (“a quality product” a degree of excellence or the lack of it (“work of average quality” or a property of A corrective action is a change implemented to address a weakness identified in a Management system. A GQM template contains the following fields:
| field | examples |
|---|---|
| object of study | pair programming, static analysis tool |
| purpose | characterize, understand, evaluate, predict, improve |
| focus | programmer effort, program reliability |
| stakeholder | developer, customer, manager |
| context factors | (other important factors that may affect outcomes) |
Here is an example of applying the GQM template to express the goal of a software engineering study:
The purpose of this study is to characterize the effect of pair programming on programmer effort and program quality from the point of view of software managers in the context of a small web-development company.
References
- Basili, Victor R. 'Using Measurement to Build Core Competencies in Software'. Seminar sponsored by Data and Analysis Center for Software, 2005.
- Van Solingen, Rini; Egon Berghout (1999). The Goal/Question/Metric Method. McGraw-Hill Education. The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc, ( is a Publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. ISBN 0077095537.
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