Advancing Defect Containment to Quantitative Defect Management

The defect containment measure is traditionally used to provide insight into project success (or lack thereof) at capturing defects early in the project life cycle, i.e., the time when defect repair costs are at their minimum. Although the measure does provide insight into the effectiveness of early defect capture techniques (such as peer reviews), defect containment in its most common form (percentage of defects captured) is a lagging indicator as its ultimate value cannot be known until a project is complete. At that point, it is too late for a project to take corrective action. Using raw defect containment data and deriving Quantitative Defect Management (QDM) measures early in the development life cycle provides opportunities for a project to identify issues in defect capture before costs spiral out of control, schedule delays ensue, and another Death March begins [1]