Management Commitment

I am continually struck by the misunderstanding of management's role in process improvement in any size organization. Many times the all the senior manager feels that they have to do is give a directive to achieve a Maturity Level by some date. And that is the extent of their involvement, expecting that the Maturity Level will simply happen because they said so. And then to make matters worse, this same senior manager does not understand why the people they put in charge of implementing the process improvement program can't make things happen faster, especially when they are perceived as setting capricious and arbitrary deadlines without asking the process team if the new dates are achievable.

Managers who are committed to correctly performing process improvement both "talk the talk" and "walk the walk". They understand the importance of:

1. setting realistic process improvement goals
2. providing the necessary support to the process team
3. addressing process improvement challenges and removing obstacles
4. instilling the process improvement mindset throughout the management structure
5. encouraging process improvement suggestions
6. being a process improvement advocate

Without being actively supportive of their process improvement goals and emphasizing this same expected behavior from the rest of the management, their process improvement goals are at serious risk. Management does have to become engaged and not simply expect that things will happen just because they spoke.

Challenges With SEPG Staffing

Amir Shahzad Khan posted these two fairly realistic scenarios to the CMMI discussion group.

Scenario 1
We have resources that are on the bench waiting to start a new project and/or new billable work. We have decided to draw on this pool of idle resources to staff the SEPG and the ML 3 process teams. Each person has accepted these new responsibilities and they are working their assigned SEPG tasks. Suddenly, there is new billable work or a new project starts. Now management reassigns these resources that were on the bench to the new work leaving their assigned SEPG tasks incomplete, severely impacting the SEPG schedule. How to do tackle this kind of situation?

Scenario 2
People are selected from the organization to staff the SEPG. They are assigned to Process Areas that match their area of expertise. However, most people are reluctant to work on their assigned SEPG tasks and they either don’t deliver or deliver much less than expected, which impacts the SEPG schedule. The primary reason of their reluctance to deliver is that they don’t consider their assigned SEPG tasks as their core area of responsibility. Since the SEPG support will not affect their performance appraisal they don’t take it seriously. They only receive verbal appreciation. What kind of reward or penalty can be introduced in this regard so that people deliver what they have committed?

What is described in both scenarios is a serious lack of Management Commitment to process improvement, the SEPG, and the CMMI. Lack of Management Commitment is your worst enemy and will effectively kill all of your efforts, despite your best intentions. What is necessary is for management at ALL levels in the organization to actively support these initiatives, not just pay lip service.

Scenario One
First off it is a bad idea to assign people on the bench some SEPG “busy work” just to keep them occupied until a billing opportunity comes along. You should have recognized this problem as one of your major risks in the Process Improvement Plan and defined a Risk Mitigation strategy to use when people are reassigned and removed from their SEPG duties. The SEPG should report these issues to the Management Steering Group (MSG), who should be held accountable for allowing key SEPG resources to be reassigned. If these resources are also key people for billable work, they should have never been assigned to the SEPG. Instead they could be considered as Subject Matter Experts that can be called upon from time to time to consult with the SEPG. There should be a core set of dedicated people on the SEPG. Others who have “signed up” to work on the SEPG should be allowed by management to support the meetings, even if they have been reassigned. Look at the IPPD practices in OPD and IPM for guidance on establishing these types of management mechanisms.

Scenario Two
This scenario sounds like management has not given clear direction as to the importance of the SEPG to its members and the organization as a whole. If management doesn’t clearly think that the SEPG is important, then why should anyone else? The Process Improvement Plan should have identified this problem as a major risk as well. If someone has been assigned to the SEPG, their SEPG role should be part of their job and they should be held accountable for their performance of their assigned duties. The SEPG is effectively the project team and the MSG the project manager. The MSG should be taking a major role in reviewing the progress to the plan and resolving issues in both scenarios.

Process Improvement in Small Organizations

On the final day of the 2008 SEPG Conference in Tampa this year there was a very interesting practitioner discussion by two small companies on their experiences in implementing CMMI Maturity Level 2. Their biggest challenge was funding the effort. Fortunately for them, they had three funding streams to draw on:
1. Internal funding
2. Contract funds
3. Funding from their mentor/protege partner
What was significant for these two companies was their levels of senior management commitment. The President of one of the companies was actively engaged with their efforts. He sat in the same office with the team and reviewed the documentation. He had a very hands-on approach that led to rapid implementation. This type of approach won't always work. Senior management has to have the proper attitude towards process improvement and be very supportive.

Other steps these companies took to rapidly improve were to establish a Management Steering Group (MSG) and Engineering Process Group (EPG) very early on as well as provide detailed training on a Process Area (PA) by PA basis, about every two weeks. They had discovered that the Introduction to CMMI class was a great introduction, as indicated by the course title, but the information did not sink in at first. They needed more in-depth discussions, which then led the teams to become more proficient in their PA roles. They also engaged with their mentor/protege (in other words, their CMMI consultant) early on as well who provided guidance and how to implement the model and avoid known pitfalls.

It was interesting to note that the lessons learned by these two small companies are the same lessons learned by much larger organizations and align with what we CMMI consultants and Lead Appraisers always tell our clients. But these lessons are much harder to "sell" to small companies that are seriously resource constrained.

Setting Proper Goals and Objectives

On choosing a transition partner for process improvment... : Green & White
One of the underlying issues in the "doomsday scenario" discussed in this article is management commitment and the proper setting of Business Goals and Objectives, Process Goals and Objectives, Quality Goals and Objectives, Project Management Goals and Objectives, etc. Achieving a certification like ISO 9000 or a CMMI Maturity Level is NOT, and should NEVER be, one of these Goals and Objectives. Unfortunately, setting the achievement of ISO or a CMMI Matuity Level is often what I see as a Business Goal and Objective when I teach the CMMI class or pay the initial visit to a new client. When the organization has this view of why it is in business, then they display ALL of the dysfunctional behaviors you noted above.

In my experience, most managers do not know how to perform proper goal setting without some coaching and mentoring. Either the goals are too lofty (motherhood and apple pie) or they have nothing to do with their core business (achieve ISO 9000 etc.).

And if their customers are demanding ISO 9000 or CMMI in order for the company to win new business, then it is extremely difficult to get management's attention to set proper goals and objectives.