GQM+Strategies [1][2] is a method for explicitly linking (software) measurement goals to higher-level goals, and also to goals and strategies at the level of the entire business. It was developed by Victor Basili, Jens Heidrich, Mikael Lindvall, Jürgen Münch, Carolyn B. Seaman, Myrna Regardie, and Adam Trendowicz from the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE), Kaiserslautern, Germany and the Fraunhofer Center for Empirical Software Engineering (CESE), Maryland, USA. It is based on the Goal Question Metric (GQM) paradigm and adds the capability to create measurement programs that ensure alignment between business goals and strategies, software-specific goals, and measurement goals.
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Determining the impact of business goals and strategies is crucial for effective decision making within a company. Different goals and strategies exist at different levels of an organization (e.g., on the management level, the department level, the project level). In practice, these goals and strategies are often not aligned and their success or failure is often determined as a gut feeling. For instance, in a software organization, engineers are frequently faced with apparently unrealistic goals related to software development. There is rarely a discussion of trade-offs or other options for such decisions in order to avoid deviations of budget and schedule. Goals and strategies need to be defined explicitly and derived from high-level business goals in a systematic and transparent way. Moreover, underlying assumptions and environmental factors are often not documented, which makes it hard to determine the reasons for failed strategies. Furthermore, if measurement data is collected on the project level, it is often unclear how the activities performed there and the data collected contribute to higher-level goals of the organization. Moreover, building an effective measurement program is a challenging task in itself. It involves observation, experience facilitation, collaboration, decision making, analysis, and synthesis regarding goals, context factors, and assumptions. Furthermore, it assumes an organizational structure that sustains the process and learns.
The GQM+Strategies approach explicitly links measurement goals to higher-level goals of an organization, and also to goals and strategies at the level of the overall business. Even though the development of the approach was focused on software-related organizations, the creators assume that the basic concepts can be generalized to set up an organization-wide measurement program for controlling business strategies. GQM+Strategies is based on the familiar Goal Question Metric (GQM) paradigm, which is in widespread use today for creating and establishing measurement programs throughout the software industry. This extension to GQM adds the capability to create measurement programs that ensure alignment between business goals and strategies, software-specific goals, and measurement goals. Although GQM has served the software industry well for several decades, it has no explicit support for integrating its software measurement model with elements of the overall organization, such as higher-level business goals and strategies.
The major output of applying the GQM+Strategies approach is the so-called GQM+Strategies grid. The grid specifies goals and strategies across all levels of an organization including the measurement program needed to monitor and control them. The underlying meta-model allows multiple goal levels and permits deriving multiple strategies for each of these goal levels. A goal may be realized by a set of strategies, which may in turn lead to a sequence of goals. A set of predefined goals and strategies may be defined as part of an (organization-specific) experience base. Selection and adaptation of predefined goals and strategies as well as definition of new goals and strategies is driven by so-called context factors and assumptions. Context factors are environmental variables that represent the organizational environment and affect the kind of models and data that can be used (e.g., the type of business, the market of an organization). Assumptions are estimated unknowns that can affect the interpretation of the data (e.g., improving customer satisfaction will increase sales). Strategies Abstraction Sheets (SAS)[3] provide a tool to support and improve the context and assumption definition and strategy selection activities of the grid derivation process. The entire GQM+Strategies model provides an organization with a mechanism not only for defining measurement consistent with larger, upper-level organizational concerns, but also for interpreting and rolling up the resulting measurement data at each level. At each goal level, measurement plans are defined in order to measure the achievement of the defined goal in combination with the chosen strategy though GQM.
The GQM+Strategies application process supports building a grid in different ways depending on whether you want to start from the top level, from the bottom level, or from somewhere in the middle of an organization. In consequence the approach addresses relevant stakeholders throughout different organizational levels.
The GQM+Strategies approach makes high-level goals, strategies, and related measurement goals explicit across all levels of an organization. The entire model provides an organization with a mechanism for defining software measurement addressing larger, upper-level organizational concerns and for interpreting and rolling up the resulting measurement data at each level.
Several approaches to (software) measurement have been developed using different mechanisms for guiding the choice of data to be collected and analyzed:
The approach works as an integrator for existing measurement approaches in an organization. For instance, some companies make use of BSC on the management level and PSM on the project level, but have problems in aligning all measurement activities across the organization. Another framework, which references the GQM+Strategies approach is the Strategic Alignment Framework (SAF)[11] which measures business process performance at the operational level. GQM+Strategies is typically used to link all these activities and to identify existing gaps in aligning goals and strategies through measurement. Current research[12] evaluated the approach utilizing revised Bloom’s taxonomy as a framework for assessing the practitioners’ cognition level of the concepts. The evaluation showed that the method has practical value and addresses current real-world problems. The approach has been applied in different industrial settings and different domains so far reaching from telecommunication, automotive, and aerospace to classical information system.[13] Most of the case studies were focusing on setting up a grid. As organizational goals and strategies change, the grid needs to be adapted accordingly and needs to be deployed to organization in a controlled manner. Therefore, future work addresses deployment and maintenance aspects of the approach.