A quantitative approach for setting technical targets based on impact analysis in software quality function deployment (SQFD)

Target setting in software quality function deployment (SQFD) is very important since it is directly related to development of high quality products with high customer satisfaction. However target setting is usually done subjectively in practice, which is not scientific. Two quantitative approaches for setting target values: benchmarking and primitive linear regression have been developed and applied in the past to overcome this problem (Akao and Yoji, 1990). But these approaches cannot be used to assess the impact of unachieved targets on satisfaction of customers for customer requirements. In addition, both of them are based on linear regression and not very practical in many applications.In this paper, we present an innovative quantitative method of setting technical targets in SQFD to enable analysis of impact of unachieved target values on customer satisfaction. It is based on assessment of impact of technical attributes on satisfaction of customer requirements. In addition both linear and non linear regression techniques are utilized in our method, which certainly improves the existing quantitative methods which are based on only linear regression.