Work Product (Artifact): Project Measurements
This artifact is the project's active repository of metrics data. It contains the most current project, resources, process, and product measurements at the primitive and derived level.
Purpose

The Project Measurements work product provides the storage for the project's metrics data. It is kept current as measurements are made or become available. It also contains the derived metrics that are calculated from the primitive data and should also store information (procedures and algorithms, for example) about how the derived metrics are obtained. Reports on the status of the project, for example, progress towards goals (functionality, quality, and so on), expenditures, and other resource consumption, are produced using the project measurements (see Artifact: Status Assessment). More frequent, or even apparently continuous, displays of project status are possible using tools where automated software data collection agents feed real-time displays of project status.

Relationships
RolesResponsible: Modified By:
Input ToMandatory: Optional: External:
  • None
Output From
Description
Main Description

The format and contents of the Project Measurements depends on the metrics selected and the technology used for collection and storage. It is essentially a database of metric-value associations and allied information for their collection and calculation. Its form could be as simple as a set of files manually maintained by the Project Manager.  However, we recommend that the collection and storage be automated and, as far as possible, be made non-intrusive.

Brief Outline

 

Properties
Optional
PlannedYes
Tailoring
Representation Options

On smaller projects, project measurements may exist only as reports from the defect tracking system and a spreadsheet to track progress. On larger or more formal projects, there may be a large selection of metrics managed using one or more databases. This may be a distributed work product.  For example, the various metrics selected by the Project Manager may be produced by several different tools, with the collection and reporting task being a manual one. Another example: the project's progress may be reported from a project plan that is routinely updated by the Project Manager from status information supplied in spreadsheets by team members.