Quality metrics are crucial in project management. It is defined as the description of the attributes of the product or project. It also aims to measure the attributes defined by the project manager.
The measurement generated in this particular project management tool is an actual value. It also sets a tolerance value that defines the allowable variations on the metric. For instance, if the objective stays within the budget by ± 20%, the quality metric is used to measure the cost of the deliverable to determine the percentage variance from the budget.
The use of quality metrics in the control quality process and quality assurance. Examples of the quality metrics include cost control, on-time performance, failure rate and defect frequency.
In a nutshell, metrics are used to guide project managers make the right decision about the project that they are handling or the organization as a whole. It is important to take note that different types of metrics should be used depending on the type of technologies and methodologies used by the project. This ensures that the true picture of the product or project is provided using the right metric.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.