Patent ID: 7337124

Claim:
A computer implemented method for operating a quality plan in a product development organization comprising a plurality of members and having quality objectives for product development projects, the method analyzing a quality metrics report, and comprising the steps of: defining a set of quality processes adapted to quality objectives required by an organization, wherein the set of quality processes includes: a tracking process for identifying an issue in the product development projects, the tracking process being an internal project management tracking process that reports a status of current risks according to a priority of a risk issue and a target date for resolution of the risk issue; a meeting set-up and reporting process for preparing and conducting meetings among a plurality of members of the organization; a daily headlights reporting process for providing communications among members of the organization, wherein the daily headlights reporting process includes a headlight report being generated by a team leader, the headlight report including achievements of a day, changes to a project plan, assistance needed for a project, and potential catastrophes associated with the project, and wherein a quality management office consolidates the headlight reports daily into a single executive report, and wherein issue records are created daily from the consolidated headlight reports to initiate corrective actions to the project, and wherein the executive reports are consolidated weekly into a summary report; a documentation process for reviewing and accepting documents generated by the product development projects; an inspection process for determining deliverables generated by the product development projects to be reworked; and a metrics process for producing metrics for the data relative to the product development projects; defining a set of computer implemented quality tools to collect data relative to product development projects, said quality tools comprising at least one database to store said collected data; for each quality process, aggregating a set of the stored data to generate a respective quality report; analyzing each quality report to detect problems in the product development projects; and using results of the analyzing step to initiate actions to resolve the problems detected, thereby improving quality of the product development projects, and wherein the daily headlights reporting process further comprises the steps of: generating headlight reports having headlights data; consolidating at a first predetermined frequency the headlights reports into a single executive report to be distributed to an executive distribution list; recording issue items in an issue memory area based on data of the executive report; and generating at a second predetermined frequency a headlight summary based on the executive reports.