Criterion

I have taken an action item to review the "Criteria for Success"  and
"Examples" for the guidelines.

Before doing this I thought I would establish what the criteria for the
"Criteria for Success"  and "Examples" should be.

Here is what I have so far:

1)  if we have a "criteria for success" section then a person should be
able to claim success if they meet the points listed.   That is -- if I
do all the items then I can say I have succeeded.

That in turn means that 'criteria for success" cannot be a partial list
of things that would be good to do.   We should not have a list of 3
items where doing them would not satisfy the guideline, - but would only
partially satisfy it.    If we did that then they wouldn’t be criteria
for success, they would just be required items.

Let me summarize this point by saying -- that if we have a "criteria for
success"  section under a guideline -- then the items listed must be
SUFFICIENT for a person to assume (AND CLAIM) success or conformance.



2) If we have a "criteria for success" section under a guideline, then
all of the items must be REQUIRED  or REQUIRED AS QUALIFIED.   That is,
each item must be required to be done in order to succeed or it must be
required as qualified.  (e.g. If you have xxxx then you (must) do yyy).


If this was not true then we would have things listed as 'criteria' for
success that indeed are not needed -- and are not therefore criteria for
success.     They may be ideas, or techniques, or strategies for
achieving the guideline, but they are not themselves the 'criteria for
success' since you can succeed without meeting them.

Let me summarize this by saying that  --  if we have a "criteria for
success" section under a guideline,  then the items must all be required
for success (as qualified).

NOTE:  it is possible for there to be a single item that is an "or"
statement.  "e.g.   You must do xxxx or do yyy.


3) Examples should be labeled as Sufficient Examples or Partial
Examples.

A Sufficient Example is an example where the guideline is met by the
described action.   That is,  for that example, (as it is described)
there is nothing else that needs to be done to meet the guideline.

A Partial Example is an example of something that you could do that
addresses the guideline, but there may also be other things that need to
be done before the guideline would be met.

I think that perhaps we should not have any partial examples in the
guidelines, except perhaps in the rationale section, where they may be
described in running text to help explain the guideline.    All other
partial examples should go into the techniques doc -- since they are
just ideas.

I will rethink this idea again after I have gone through the doc and
looked at things.  These are my thoughts now.


4)  I don’t think that we will have "Success Criteria" for all the
guidelines.   Some of them are focused enough or have other
characteristics that the guideline itself is as good as we can do for
"Success Criteria".   Anything else is either not necessary (e.g. there
are several ways to do it)  or they are not sufficient  (e.g. there are
things we can say, -  but we don’t have a full list of what you would
need to do to succeed.  Thus we don’t have a list of criteria for
success.

When this occurs we could have examples or ideas or something but we
should not have a list of things we call "Success Criteria" which are
not necessary or are not sufficient to claim success.






Your thoughts?  (pro or con)


Gregg

-- ------------------------------
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Human Factors
Dept of Ind. Engr. - U of Wis.
Director - Trace R & D Center
Gv@trace.wisc.edu <mailto:Gv@trace.wisc.edu>, <http://trace.wisc.edu/>
FAX 608/262-8848 
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Received on Saturday, 4 August 2001 15:57:03 UTC