Customizing criteria and Values

You can customize the criteria, criterion values, and weights used by ALM to determine the Risk and Functional Complexity Categories for each requirement. Risk is comprised of the Business Criticality and Failure Probability.

ALM provides a default set of criteria when you create a new project. You can delete these criteria if you do not want to use them.

To customize criteria and values:

  1. In the Project Customization window, in the left pane, click Risk-Based Quality Management. The Risk-Based Quality Management page opens.

  2. Click one of the following tabs:

    • To customize criteria for determining Business Criticality, click the Business Criticality tab.

    • To customize criteria for determining Failure Probability, click the Failure Probability tab.

    • To customize criteria for determining Functional Complexity, click the Functional Complexity tab.

    • The selected tab displays the relevant criteria.

  3. To add a new criterion, select the Criterion list and click the New button. A new row is added to the end of the Criterion list. Type a name for the criterion in the new row.

  4. To add a description for a criterion, select the criterion from the Criterion list and type the description in the Description of Criterion box. This description is displayed in the Risk tab of the Requirements module when a user assesses Business Criticality, Failure Probability, and Functional Complexity. By providing a full description of each criterion, including an explanation of its available values, you help the user decide which value to assign to each criterion for a requirement.

  5. To add a value for a criterion, select the criterion from the Criterion list and select the Value list. Click the New button. A new row is added to the Value list. Type a name for the value in the new row.

    Note: Each value for a criterion must be unique.

  6. To assign a weight to a criterion value, select the criterion from the Criterion list and then select the value from the Value list. In the Weight column for the value, type the weight to assign to the value.

    When ALM calculates the Business Criticality, Failure Probability, or Functional Complexity of a requirement, it checks the values assigned to each criterion and calculates the sum of the corresponding weights for each value. This sum determines the Business Criticality, Failure Probability, or Functional Complexity. For details, see Customizing Weight Boundaries.

  7. You can delete a criterion or a value for a criterion:

    • To delete a criterion, select the criterion from the Criterion list and click the Delete button. The criterion is deleted.

    • To delete a criterion's value, select the criterion from the Criterion list and the value from the Value list. Click the Delete button. The value is deleted.

    Note: Business Criticality, Failure Probability, and Functional Complexity must each have at least one associated criterion defined. In addition, each criterion must have at least one possible value.

  8. To change the order in which criteria are displayed in the Criterion list, select a criterion and click the Move Up or Move Down buttons. Note that values for a criterion are automatically ordered by their weights.

  9. Click Save to save your changes to the Risk-Based Quality Management page.