Six Sigma and software (notes)

With the craziness that has become my life, I have created a diagram that defines a software development process that I am proposing for a large project I am currently working on. We have been plagued by a combination of incomplete requirements, poor technical detail, and changing requirements, so I am trying to develop a formal process to minimize these problems. We need something like this to help everyone keep their sanity and to help reduce/control costs. I never thought I would be "Mr. Process", but it seems necessary in this case.

As I've written before, I am trying to look at this problem from a "Six Sigma" perspective. This has led me to an investigation of Function Points as a software metric. By assigning function point quantities to bugs and change requests, I am hoping that we can track these over a period of time to eventually deliver a minimal cost to the customer on this project.

Don't get me wrong -- change is inevitable and often desirable. But this project has been very difficult, and I think everyone involved wants to have a little more process (or engineering) involved.