Work Environment Evidence Question

There are two Specific Practices in the CMMI that address the work environment:

• OPD SP 1.6 Establish and maintain work environment standards
• IPM SP 1.3 Establish and maintain the project’s work environment based on the organization’s work environment standards

There are other Specific Practices in the model that address specific environments:

• VER SP 1.2 Establish and maintain the environment needed to support verification
• VAL SP 1.2 Establish and maintain the environment needed to support validation
• PI SP 1.2 Establish and maintain the environment needed to support the integration of the product components

In addition, the model references a number of other project work environments: maintenance, operational, production, and engineering.

Since IPM SP 1.3 contains the phrase “establish and maintain”, the organization needs to provide for a SCAMPI A appraisal evidence of “formulate”, “document”, and “use” of the project’s work environment. What is appropriate evidence to provide for IPM SP 1.3?

The “document” evidence could be the document(s) containing the description of each of the project’s work environments and its relationship to the organization’s work environment standards. The “formulate” evidence might be the inspection/review report(s) of these document(s). And the “use” evidence could be an example of a work product produced using the documented work environment. For example, evidence of use of the development environment might be a product build report demonstrating use of the environment for developing the product.

Since the Verification, Validation, and Integration Environments are covered by other Process Areas, it would be appropriate to provide for IPM SP 1.3 evidence of use of other components of the documented work environment to demonstrate the work environment covers more than testing.