Pareto analysis is a statistical technique used for decision-making and is based on the Pareto principle, often called the 80/20 rule. Its primary function is to identify and prioritize the most significant problems or causes. By arranging factors in descending order of frequency or impact on a bar chart, it visually distinguishes the "vital few" from the "trivial many." This ranking allows teams to focus their limited resources on the items that will yield the most significant improvement, making it an essential tool for strategic problem-solving and quality improvement initiatives.

A. Showing relationships between items: This is incorrect. Tools like cause-and-effect (Ishikawa) diagrams or scatter plots are designed to explore and display relationships between different variables or causes.

C. Measuring the impact of identified items: This is incomplete. While Pareto analysis uses measurements of impact as input, its core effectiveness lies in using those measurements to rank and prioritize items, not just measure them.

1. Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK), Version 3.0, IEEE Computer Society, 2014. In Chapter 4, "Software Quality," section 3.2.2 "Analytical Techniques," it states: "Pareto analysis is a statistical technique for selecting a small number of causes that produce a significant overall effect... It is used to identify the most important causes of a problem." (p. 4-10).

2. Montgomery, D. C. (2020). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control (9th ed.). Wiley. In Chapter 5, "The Basic Tools of SPC," the Pareto chart is described as a fundamental tool whose "purpose is to prioritize problems." It helps to "separate the vital few from the trivial many." (Section 5.2.4).

3. MIT OpenCourseWare. (2012). 16.660J Introduction to Lean Six Sigma Methods. IAP 2012. In the lecture notes for "Session 2: Define/Measure I," the Pareto Chart is explicitly listed as a tool used to "Prioritize problems" and "Focus on the 'vital few' not the 'trivial many'."