ITPEC IP April 2018 Question 70
The design quality of software is associated with the skills of the designers, the design methods, the design tools, and other factors. Which of the following is an appropriate name for a diagram or a chart that resembles a fishbone and is used for identifying the items that affect the quality?
Explanation
Cause and effect diagram — the fishbone diagram that arranges the factors affecting a result, here design quality, along bones leading to it.
The result (the quality characteristic) is written at the head, a backbone runs to it, and major cause categories, such as designer skills, design methods and design tools, branch off as large bones, each with smaller causes attached. It organizes every item that may affect the quality, so it is used to find root causes. It is also called an Ishikawa or characteristic diagram.
Answer (b)
Why not others:
- •(a) Arrow diagram — shows the order and dependencies of activities in a schedule, used to find the critical path
- •(c) Pareto chart — bars sorted by size with a cumulative percentage line, used to pick the few items that matter most
- •(d) Matrix diagram — lays out two sets of factors as rows and columns and marks the relations at their intersections
Key rule: Fishbone = listing possible causes of one effect; Pareto = ranking observed items by size; arrow diagram = scheduling activities.
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