QFD: Echoing the voice of the customer

One of the most promising techniques in contemporary, customer-driven engineering is quality-function deployment (QFD). This product-realization approach helps ensure that customer needs and expectations directly influence the definition, design, implementation, and deployment of products and services. QFD comprises a system of highly traceable engineering procedures in a cross-functional team framework that use graphical displays to drive all phases of product deployment without stifling the voice of the customer. QFD-based product realization yields clear competitive advantages over more traditional processes by promoting greater customer satisfaction, shorter time to market, and improved product performance. Within AT&T, QFD has been used in such diverse applications as planning software-development environments, specifying the characteristics of transmission systems, and guiding the definition of more tangible products like batteries. This paper highlights the QFD process, drawing examples from recent projects that used QFD in refining a software-development environment and in realizing computing services.