Overview

Leading companies around the world, among them Toyota and General Electric, have practiced Quality Function Deployment (QFD) for decades. Developed in Japan by Dr. Yoji Akao and Dr. Shigeru Mizuno, QFD has two aims: to ensure that true customer needs are properly deployed throughout all phases of the development process, and to improve the development process itself. The application of QFD to software (Software QFD) began in Japan in 1982, in North America in 1988, and in Europe in 1990. Today many leading software organizations around the world use Software QFD and it is an essential part of such organization-wide quality approaches as Total Quality Management (TQM) and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) at those companies.

As a quality system, QFD employs, but is not limited to, the Seven Management and Planning (7 MP) Tools and has deployments, or subsystems, to address customer concerns such as quality, technology, cost/schedule, and reliability/risk, among others. Although QFD is known for the "House of Quality" matrix, organizations that simply use this matrix alone neither meet the aims of QFD nor are considered to be "doing QFD" by leading QFD experts. Further, because of unfortunate historical errors in understanding, many published QFD examples are incorrect and are not suitable as models for software development. Such mistakes are corrected in the overview of Blitz QFD presented in this chapter.

Chapter Outline

• QFD: Origin and Introduction

• Problems with Traditional QFD Applied to Software

• Modern QFD for Software

• The Blitz QFD Process

• Implementing Software QFD

• Conclusion

• Key Points

• Additional Resources

• Internet Exercises

• Review Questions

• Discussion Questions

• Endnotes

• About the Author