The current edition of the Defense Acquisition Research Journal has an article, "A Statistical Approach to the Development of Progress Plans Utilizing Bayesian Methods."
The importance of this paper is several fold:
- It defines in detail the development of Technical Performance Measures using specific estimating processes.
- Expert judgment is augmented with Bayesian statistics to improve the estimating processes.
- Expert estimates are weighted in the Bayesian network, along with standard deviations
All of this is important because it improves the statistical confidence in estimates of performance for TPMs. The TPMs are the basis of measuring increasing maturity for the products or services delivered by the project.
These TPMs are the measures of progress to plan. Their are defined prior to starting work and are the measures of the outcome of the work effort.
