Review Activity for a Short Term Project

Our organization will be going through CMMI Maturity Level 2 Appraisal in a couple of months. I have a PPQA question. As per the PPQA Process Area (PA), we require a review of the work products (content/template) and procedures required at Maturity Level2 during the project life cycle. We have one project that is 3 months long. There are many work products that will be produced during the project development life cycle.

• Requirement documents such as SRS, Use cases, Bidirectionally traceability matrix document, change log, etc;
• Plans for all the PAs, e.g. requirements management plan, project plan, configuration plan, etc;
• Development artifacts, such as ERD, Code, UML diagrams, etc;
• QC artifacts, such as test cases, test reports, etc.
• Monitoring/controlling artifacts, such as Issue list, MoMs, Risks, etc.

How is it possible to review the work products for a 3 month project when we don't have a separate QA department and the stakeholders involved in development do the work product reviews one way or the other.

This same question holds true for reviewing procedures.

Of course, we review high priority documents, such as Project Plan, Use Cases, ERD, Application; but not all of them.

Can you help me understand what should be done for a short duration project, such that the PPQA PA requirements are met and we don't have to hire separate people just to fulfill the requirement?

The first thing that I would do is postpone your ML 2 SCAMPI A appraisal as apparently you have a major risk to achieving ML 2 since PPQA does not appear to be in place in your organization. And even if you could put PPQA in place for a 3 month project between now and your appraisals, that may still not be enough time to demonstrate institutionalization, meaning that you have a repeatable process. Essentially you will have one project using PPQA, which is one data point. And it is not possible to determine institutionalization from one data point. Your organization will be at serious risk of not achieving ML 2.

Industry average shows that PPQA is 3 – 5% of your organization. You haven’t told me how large your organization is. But if your organization is 25 people, than 1 person should be assigned to perform the PPQA practices.

I think that you are misunderstanding the differences between reviewing a work product and objectively evaluating a work product. It sounds like your project teams are already reviewing the work products. The role of PPQA is not to review the work products, but to audit the work products and processes to ensure that the work products follow the specific standards and are products according to your documented processes.

I highly recommend that you, or someone you select in your organization, take a training class on how to perform PPQA. I cannot adequately explain how to perform PPQA and answer your specific questions in this blog. The person you select for the training needs to be taught how to conduct a work product audit, how to conduct a process audit, how to plan PPQA audits, how to communicate audit results, and how to track audit non-compliances to resolution. If you don’t already have this capability in house, it will take some time to develop it internally. And I strongly advise against using an external consultant to provide this service. PPQA is for the benefit of your organization and management. It is essentially the eyes and ears of your senior management. And an external consultant may be motivated by other considerations than your best business interests if asked to provide PPQA services.

Achieving a Maturity Level Without a Consultant or Training

I was wondering if it is possible to go it alone with CMMI Maturity Level 2. I have been told by many that attempting CMMI Maturity Level 2 without a consultant or highly trained staff would be somewhat challenging. What are your thoughts?

Also, having limited resources for process improvement being a strong possibility, do you have any recommendations for online sources that can help offset the costs?

Though it is entirely possible to implement the CMMI without hiring a CMMI consultant, that is a high risk approach. Though I don’t see how you could avoid taking the Introduction to CMMI training class. That, in my opinion, would be a huge mistake. There are some areas in the CMMI that are open to interpretation when trying to go it alone and you can end up doing things in the spirit of achieving Maturity Level 2 that have no business value to you. In addition, since your organization has to provide 4 to 8 appraisal team members, each appraisal team member must take the SEI’s Introduction to CMMI class.

These are all worthwhile expenditures of your process improvement budget. And when you compare these expenses to your internal costs for process improvement, these are usually negligible in comparison.

But if you are trying to do things as cheaply as possible, that begs the question, why are you even considering implementing the CMMI and trying to achieve Maturity Level 2? Basically you get what you pay for. Going the cheap route doesn’t demonstrate management commitment to process improvement and can result in wasted effort, wasted money, and an aborted process improvement initiative.

REQM and RD in the CMMI

Why is REQM Management at Maturity Level 2 and Requirement Development at Maturity Level 3? We develop the requirements first and then manage them in the project.

There reason for the placement is due to the meaning of ML 2 vs. ML 3. ML 2 is all about stabilizing projects and gaining control over project estimates. Once the organization has achieved this, then it can begin to evaluate how to improve the engineering areas.

Since you need to have a baseline upon which to plan a project and the other ML 2 Process Areas, that is why REQM is the first Process Area in ML 2. The intent is to manage the collection of project requirements: good, bad, or indifferent. And use this collection to plan the project, etc. Then when you have achieved ML 2 and move to ML 3, then you can address how to improve the Requirements Elicitation to obtain better requirements.

Please keep in mind that the CMMI is a collection of guidelines and best practices for doing process improvement. The CMMI is not a roadmap for how to do software engineering.

How to Start With the CMMI

If a private software company wants to do get a certificate of quality for CMMI Level 2, what must this company do in order to obtain Level 2? And also what are the steps that must be followed from the start (initial) to achieve CMMI Level 2 (Managed)?

First let me state that there is no certification of any type for the CMMI. Individual Lead Appraisers will issue something looks like a certificate to the organization that was appraised indicating the SCAMPI A results. But this is not a certification. The only things that the SEI certifies are the CMMI instructors and Lead Appraisers.

Here are the necessary steps for achieving Maturity Level 2 for the CMMI-DEV. These steps are not necessarily sequential, some can occur concurrently.

1. Hire an SEI-certified Lead Appraiser to conduct a Gap Analysis of the company to determine the current process strengths and weaknesses and help the company construct a Process Improvement Plan (PIP).
2. Obtain executive management sponsorship for the process improvement effort.
3. Train the people responsible for the company’s processes and for addressing the action items in the PIP on the 3-day SEI Introduction to CMMI v1.2 class.
4. Address the issues from the Gap Analysis, document the necessary processes and procedures, and begin conducting the PPQA process and work product audits.
5. Allow time for the new and/or modified processes to get some use on various projects.
6. Conduct a SCAMPI B appraisal as a dress rehearsal for the SCAMPI A. Identify any issues and weaknesses that are potential risks to achieving Maturity Level 2.
7. Create a new PIP to address the SCAMPI B identified weaknesses and risks.
8. Address these issues
9. Conduct the Maturity Level 2 SCAMPI A appraisal.

PPQA After Maturity Level 2

I work in an IT organization that achieved CMMI Maturity Level 2 several years ago (we let the rating lapse) and I was wondering if you had some ideas on the following two questions:

1) What types of activities would PPQA engage in if the org had been Maturity Level 2 (I think they could have pursued Maturity Level 3 and been close)? Please also consider that the company is pursuing other types of improvement methods and models such as lean/6-sigma and ITIL.

2) What strategies should we pursue to show the worth of PPQA? Even in the good old CMM days and SQA one of the issues I had was that it was difficult to show the practical monetary worth of these support functions; one generally had to take it on faith that PPQA/SQA delivered some degree of worth to the company. Any thoughts?

The answer to question 1 is simple. Just read the PPQA Process Area and GP 2.9. The PPQA activities include performing both process and work product audits of the project and organization processes. For Maturity Level 2 that would mean auditing your REQM, PP, PMC, SAM, MA, PPQA, and CM processes.

The answer to question 2 is a bit more difficult. Basically you are asking, what is the cost of quality? One method you can use is to look at the total cost for the project and analyze it using Crosby’s Cost of Quality Model. The total costs break down into two categories: the Cost of Quality and the Cost of Performance.

The Cost of Performance includes such things as: generating plans, documentation, and developing requirements, design, code, and integration.

The Cost of Quality breaks down further into two categories: Cost of Conformance and Cost of Non-Conformance.

The Cost of Non-Conformance includes fixing defects, reworking documents, updating source code, re-reviews, re-tests, patches, engineering changes, CCBs, external failures and fines, Customer Support, and Help Desk.

The Cost of Conformance breaks down to two more categories: Cost of Appraisal and Cost of Prevention.

The Cost of Appraisal includes reviews, walkthroughs, testing (first time), independent V&V, and Audits.

The Cost of Prevention includes training, policies, procedures, tools, planning, quality improvement, data gathering and analysis, root cause analysis, and quality reporting.

The cost of PPQA is included in the Cost of Prevention.

When you consider these definitions and cost break down, the only category that will be affected by PPQA is the Cost of Non-Conformance. When PPQA audits the processes and work products, the audits will reveal non-conformances with people following the documented processes and procedures, which lead to re-work. By addressing these non-conformances, the goal is to reduce or effectively eliminate the rework and that is where you can demonstrate the value of PPQA.

Hope this helps.

Software Sizing

We are trying to achieve CMMI Maturity Level (ML) 3 in my company and we have decided to skip ML 2. So, now, one of our problems is related to software size estimation. We defined a proprietary method, based on Use Case Points and Function Points, but the practitioners are struggling with it. From your experience, what other methods have you seen or implemented in the companies with this same problem? Or, if a proprietary method was defined, what were the main aspects to take in account?

I would strongly urge you to forget the ML 3 Process Areas until you have mastered ML 2. There is a fundamental difference between how a ML 2 Project Manager approaches Project Planning (PP) and Project Monitoring and Control (PMC) vs. a ML 3 Project Manager. Estimation being one of the differences. Use Case Points and Functions Points are fairly sophisticated concepts and there are challenges with getting consistency in determining what each of these things are. I would recommend that you take a step back from the model and the projects and look at your historical project data. Use the actual effort, costs, etc. from previous projects to estimate a new project. Forget about Use Case Points and Function Points for now. Once you have mastered being able to use historical information to build an empirical estimation model, then it might make sense to add a layer of sophistication by considering Use Case Points or Function Points.

Another recommendation is let the Project Manager create the project estimates and then review them with the practitioners as a sanity check rather than ask the practitioners to create the estimates. Over time as the organization gains experience estimating projects etc., then it makes sense to involve the practitioners up front in the estimation process. You have to learn to crawl first with estimation before you can sprint with the big boys.

Product Planning and Configuration

It is common knowledge that Maturity Level 2 is project specific, and still I find at times Lead Appraisers asking funny questions during SCAMPI A appraisals. Quite recently, one of my friends told me that his Lead Appraiser is looking for planning at the product level, as well as Configuratuion Management at the product level. I was a bit amazed, thinking that Maturity Level 2 focuses on Project Planning, not product planning. What do you think about this situation? Have you been faced with this situation before? Is there a workaround for it?

From what you describe, it sounds like this Lead Appraiser could be misinterpreting the CMMI and possibly misleading the organization. The CMMI is quite clear that the Project Planning (PP) Process Area (PA) is for project planning purposes, not product planning.

"The purpose of PP is to establish and maintain plans that define project activities."

However, sometimes the difference between project and product can be blurred. By not knowing the context of the situation you described, the Lead Appraiser may have been trying a different approach to draw project planning information out in the interview sessions.

In one respect, it really doesn’t matter the line of questioning in a SCAMPI interview session. The Lead Appraiser could really ask about any topic. However, once he or she starts deviating from the CMMI, they are on shaky ground and could lose credibility. What does matter however, is the set of findings produced by the Lead Appraiser and the Appraisal Team. If there are findings associated with product planning that cannot be tied to the satisfaction of a CMMI Specific Goal or a Specific Practice, then these would be non-model findings and should have no impact on the resulting appraisal rating. However, if these non-model findings do impact the appraisal rating and the Lead Appraiser and Appraisal Team fail to demonstrate the linkage to Goal and Practice satisfaction/implementation, then the Lead Appraiser has not correctly performed his or her Lead Appraiser duties and the SEI should be informed about this issue so it can be investigated.

CMMI Novice Question

I would like to know if all the Maturity Level 2 Process Areas must be completed for a Maturity Level 2 appraisal? There are some process areas which are not applicable to our organization.

For the CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV) there is only one Process Area (PA) that can be designated Not Applicable (N/A), SAM. Therefore, at a minimum, REQM, PP, PMC, MA, PPQA, and CM are required for a Maturity Level 2 (ML 2) appraisal. And if the organization has outsourced some work, then SAM is also applicable.

I find it hard to believe that you can state that one or more of these PAs are not applicable to your organization. Every project has requirements to manage from the janitor to the President. Everyone works on a project. You just have to define what a project is. And then you manage the project. Everyone can define specific measures that can be used to manage the project. Everyone has some sort of configuration items or documents that have to be managed. And everyone needs some sort of objective evaluation of the process and project compliance. For a small organization, you may have combined one or more of these PAs under one person. But that does not mean these PAs are not applicable.

Now if you said that you had problems with the engineering PAs (RD, TS, PI, VER, and VAL), then I would suggest that the CMMI-DEV may not be the appropriate model constellation for your use and you should look at the CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC) or CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ).

SEI Published Appraisal Results

I have a question related to the published data in SEI web site: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/appraisal-program/profile/pdf/CMMI/2008MarCMMI.pdf Process Maturity Profile by All Reporting Organizations (Page 5):

1. 1.5% or the reporting organizations are (Initial - Maturity Level 1) rating. How is a Maturity Level 1 rating achieved?
2. Also, 8% of the reporting organizations indicate that a Maturity Level is Not Given. What does ‘Not Given’ mean…? Level 0 ?

In my understanding, Maturity Level is related to the Staged representation and can have
rating from ML 2 - 5.

It is great to see and hear that people are actually looking at this information and asking questions about how to interpret the data. You are on your way to understanding Measurement and Analysis!

To answer your first question, how is Maturity Level 1 provided? Obviously, an organization does not conduct a SCAMPI A appraisal to confirm that they are Maturity Level 1. So what happens in this case is the scope of the SCAMPI A appraisal is Maturity Level 2, 3, 4, or 5. But what happens is during the appraisal a serious goal impacting weakness in a Maturity Level 2 Process Area is found by the appraisal team. By the rules of the SCAMPI method then the resulting Maturity Level is 1. Since the SCAMPI A results must be submitted to the SEI, a rating of Maturity Level 1 appears. It doesn’t happen that often because most organizations take the appropriate steps to be prepared to achieve their target Maturity Level. That is why 1.5% of the reported results are for Maturity Level 1.

The Not Given category means that the organization did not report its resulting Maturity Level rating. I would hazard a guess that it probably means that they had successfully achieved Maturity Level 1. There is no Maturity Level 0, despite what many chaotic organizations say they are when first encountering the CMMI.

A Question About Estimation

I'm a bit confused about what the CMMI requires for estimation. Is it valid for us to define our process as simple as guessing? Could we use something similar to Planning Poker or other similar agile techniques? The problem is that we've been told we need to have a quantitative and repeatable process for estimating in order to meet Project Planning (PP) SP 1.4 "Estimate the project effort and cost for the work products and tasks based on estimation rational." But in reality we don't have historical data and many of us think estimating is subjective anyway.

When you start implementing Maturity Level 2 there is no expectation that you have any historical data for estimating. The best you can do at that point is guess, SWAG, or use engineering judgment. One of the characteristics of being a Maturity Level 2 organization is that you are learning. You are learning what it means to estimate a project. You are learning how to improve your estimates so that over time you will be able to produce accurate estimates to build the foundation to allow the organization to move to Maturity Level 3. So, by the time you are ready for a Maturity Level 2 SCAMPI A appraisal, the expectation is that you have a repeatable estimation process (repeatability is at the core of Maturity Level 2) that is based on historical project data. Estimation is not difficult, it just takes a little bit of brain power and being systematic in your approach. One of the purposes of achieving Maturity Level 2 is moving from being subjective in estimation to being objective. If you have people that believe estimation is subjective, then I am afraid that you are still operating as a Maturity Level 1 organization.

Achieving CMMI Level 2

I am a junior in the field of SQA. I need help about the implementation of CMMI. I want to implement CMMI in the organization Iam working for. I need to know the names of the documents needed to achieve CMMI level 2. And it will be very beneficial for me if I could find out the templates of the documents.

The best advice that I can give you is to take the SEI’s 3-day Introduction to CMMI class. That class will provide you the basics for understanding what you need to do to achieve Maturity Level 2.

A very important concept to understand is that there ISN’T any canned set of documents or templates that you have to have in order to achieve Maturity Level 2. The specific processes you need to document and the associated process assets are a function of the work you perform and the methodology you use to produce your products. I would also suggest that you hire an SEI-authorized Lead Appraiser/consultant to help you understand how to implement the model and achieve Maturity Level 2.

An alternative is to read some of the many books that have been written on how to implement the CMMI. Just look at Amazon for some ideas.

CMMI Maturity 3 Appraisal Process

We are planning to go to CMMI 3 level certification. I recently joined in my company. Please tell me the necesary processes and steps.

1. First off, just to be clear, there is no such thing as “CMMI 3 level certification.” An organization is appraised to the CMMI using the SCAMPI A appraisal method to determine either the organization’s Maturity Level or the Capability Level of the organization’s processes. The result of the SCAMPI A is not a certification, but simply a rating of the current Maturity Level or Capability Level.
2. Has your company already achieved Maturity Level 2? Has your company hired a CMMI consultant? Has your company hired an SEI-authorized SCAMPI Lead Appraiser? Has an SEI-authorized instructor provided the SEI Introduction to CMMI class to your company?
3. If the answer to all of these questions is NO, then hire a CMMI consultant and a Lead Appraiser. The Lead Appraiser cannot provide the CMMI consulting. Most Lead Appraisers are also authorized CMMI instructors, so the next step is to train your process group and any people who might be an appraisal team member on the CMMI.
   
4. Perform a Class C appraisal (gap analysis) to identify where you need to focus your CMMI implementation efforts. Use the findings from the Class C to write a process improvement plan, and use the plan to monitor and control your CMMI implementation efforts.
   
5. Implement CMMI Maturity Level 2 FIRST. Once you have established the firm project management foundation of Maturity Level 2, THEN consider implementing Maturity Level 3. If you try to implement BOTH Maturity Level 2 and Maturity Level 3 at the same time, you will encounter difficulties. There is a huge difference between managing projects at Maturity Level 2 and managing projects at Maturity Level 3.
   
6. Once you feel comfortable that you have addressed all of the findings from the Class C and you have had several project cycles to institutionalize the documented processes, then consult with your Lead Appraiser to determine if your organization is ready to conduct a benchmarking SCAMPI A appraisal.
   
7. There will be more training (appraisal team and PIIDs) and activities leading up to the SCAMPI A, but your Lead Appraiser will tell you exactly what you will need to do to prepare for the appraisal.

ML 2/ML 3 Measurement Objectives

For a Maturity Level 3 organization , is it acceptable if the organization sets its process performance objectives qualitatively? For example reduce testing cycle time , improve productivity, etc. and in OPF SG1, one of sub-practices states that process performance objectives may be expressed either quantitatively or qualitatively. Also would you please explain this clarification linking to ML2- MA - SP 1.1 - Establish measurement objective?

These are good questions, but the best way to receive a decent understanding of the concepts it to attend the SEI’s Introduction to the CMMI class. Intro to CMMI course description Brief answers, such as mine in this blog, will probably only raise more questions that would be better addressed in a classroom setting.

1. Only for High Maturity organizations (ML 4 and 5) is there an expectation for quantitatively setting process performance objectives. It is acceptable at ML 3 for qualitative objectives. But to fully understand this distinction you really require a good discussion on the expectations for each Maturity Level, which you would receive in the Intro to CMMI class.
   
2. A measurement objective is different from a process performance objective. The measurement objectives are the purposes for which measurement and analysis is performed and also specify what kinds of actions may be taken as a result of data analyses. In order to determine the measurement objectives, you first have to describe the information needs. An information need is an insight necessary to manage objectives, goals, issues, risks, and problems. The measurement objective is derived from the information need and it is a statement about what should be measured in order to satisfy the information need. For example, the project manager or other decision maker concerned with allocating budget and associated resources to a task may believe that productivity is related to the type of task being performed. Increasing productivity is then the measurement objective that addresses the defined information need. Determining productivity then requires that entities such as the product and the process be measured. There are many ways that productivity can be computed, but the measurement objective is unaffected by the different methods.

To fully understand these concepts you should take a class on Measurement and Analysis or Practical Software Measurement. Trying to explain these concepts in a paragraph or two does not do the subject justice.

Stakeholder Involvement Question

Would you please explain the differences between monitoring stakeholder involvement (PMC) and managing stakeholder involvement (IPM)?

The difference is, at the core, the difference between a Maturity Level 2 organization and a Maturity Level 3 organization.

Monitoring stakeholder involvement basically means watching the involvement of the stakeholders. If a stakeholder is supposed to perform some activity or attend a meeting, did the stakeholder in fact do these things? And if the stakeholder does not perform their activity, did this lack result in a significant deviation in project performance? If so, then the Project Manager would take a corrective action to address the deviation.

Managing stakeholder involvement builds on the monitoring aspect by being proactive in ensuring that the stakeholder does perform their agreed to and assigned activities. For example, if a stakeholder is supposed to attend a meeting, managing their involvement might be to ensure that they are invited to the meeting, to ensure that they acknowledged the invitation, to ensure that they sent an appropriate substitute to the meeting if he or she could not attend, and to ensure that the stakeholder actively participated in the meeting to fulfill their role and responsibility as opposed to merely attending the meeting. If the Project Manager determines through these checks and balances that the stakeholder is not involved as agreed to, then the Project Manager does the necessary actions to ensure that the lack of stakeholder involvement is mitigated in the meeting, for example.

Please read my other blog "Query on ML 3 and ML 4" for a brief description of the characteristics of each Maturity Level.

Query on ML 3 and ML 4

What is the significance of Maturity Level 3 and Maturity Level 4? And can you explain to me what is Integrated Project Management?

What broad questions! These questions really need a long in depth answer and are addressed very well in the Introduction to CMMI class. So first off I would suggest that you find an opportunity to take this class. Please visit http://www.ppqc.net/training/training.htm for more information about the class.

To briefly answer these two questions, the answer needs to address ML 2 as well. So I will start with some definitions from the CMMI book.
Process Area (PA) – a cluster of related practices in an area that, when implemented collectively, satisfy a set of goals considered important for making improvement in that area.
Maturity Level (ML) – degree of process improvement across a predefined set of process areas in which all goals in the set are attained. An ML is a defined evolutionary plateau for organization process improvement. Each ML matures an important subset of the organization’s processes, preparing it to move to the next ML.
Maturity Level 1: Initial – processes are usually ad hoc and chaotic. The organization usually does not provide a stable environment to support the process. Success in these organizations depends on the competence and heroics of the people in the organization and not on the use of proven processes.
Maturity Level 2: Managed – projects of the organization have ensured that processes are planned and executed in accordance with policy; the projects employ skilled people who have adequate resources to produce controlled outputs; involve relevant stakeholders; are monitored, controlled, and reviewed; and are evaluated for adherence to their process descriptions, The process discipline reflected by ML 2 helps to ensure that existing practices are retained during times of stress. When these practices are in place, projects are performed and managed according to their documented plans.
Maturity Level 3: Defined – processes are well characterized and understood, and are described in standards, procedures, tools, and methods. The organization’s set of standard processes, which is the basis for ML 3, is established and improved over time. These standard processes are used to establish consistency across the organization. Projects establish their defined process by tailoring the organization’s set of standard processes according to tailoring guidelines.
Maturity Level 4: Quantitatively Managed – the organization and projects establish quantitative objectives for quality and process performance and use them as criteria in managing processes. Quantitative objectives are based on the needs of the customer, end users, organization, and process implementers. Quality and process performance is understood in statistical terms and is managed throughout the life of the processes.
Maturity Level 5: Optimizing – an organization continually improves its processes based on a quantitative understanding of the common causes of variation inherent in processes.

Given these definitions and explanations, one of the fundamental differences between ML 3 and ML 4 is that at ML 3 the organization is learning how to use a standard set of processes, tailoring them to the individual project needs, and collecting enough process data such that Process Performance Baselines and Process Performance Models can be built and used at ML 4 to quantitatively manage projects and statistically manage sub-processes to achieve the organization’s quality and process performance objectives.

To answer the second question, you first need to understand the Project Planning (PP), Project Monitoring and Control (PMC), and Integrated Project Management (IPM) PAs. PP and PMC are ML 2 PAs that address the basic project management practices of planning a project, creating a project plan, and using that project plan to track and monitor the project. At ML 2, the organization typically is learning how to create accurate and realistic estimates by building estimation models. It takes time to refine these estimation models, so an ML 2 organization is expected to frequently revise and re-baseline the project plan as the projects get smarter about estimation. At ML 3, one of the project management expectations is that the project estimates are now accurate and realistic. So, rather than constantly update the estimates to match the actuals as done at ML 2, the Project Manager now manages the project to the estimates, meaning that the PM can now fairly accurately predict early on in the lifecycle whether or not the project will hit its downstream targets and take appropriate corrective action to mitigate these risks. The other differences between IPM and PP/PMC include establishing the project’s defined process by applying appropriate tailoring criteria to the organization’s standard processes, establishing the project’s work environment, integrating the various plans that comprise the project plan, managing the project using the integrated plans, and managing the project’s relevant stakeholders. In other words, IPM builds on the project management foundation established by PP and PMC.

This a lengthy explanation but only a surface treatment on these subjects. Again I strongly recommend to anyone interested in this topic that you attend an offering of the Introduction to CMMI v1.2 class. You will go into these concepts in much greater detail and you will come out with a much better understanding of the model, PAs, and MLs than I can convey in this blog.

How Can I Manage Both Legacy and Maintenance Projects?

The nature of the work does not preclude the organization from having to follow processes. The organization simply has to define the processes correctly for the different types of work and domains. For a Maturity Level 2 (ML 2) organization, this approach comes down to how the organization defines a project. In my experience, clients who are managing legacy and/or maintenance projects initially define individual changes as a project and it kills them because of everything required by Project Planning (PP) and Project Monitoring and Control (PMC). So the organization then has to think about how they manage work. At what level do they create a project schedule? Is it for each change? Or is it for a group of changes? Or is it on an annual basis? Basically the changes for maintenance work tend to be treated as a “job jar” and the organization pulls different jobs out of the jar to work on. So my clients in this situation, then consider work being managed annually, meaning that there is an annual project plan covering staffing levels, training, etc. That is, most of the PP Specific Practices (SPs). Then when they work on a specific job or task, they have a mini-schedule that is reviewed and compared to the annual plan to ensure that everything is compatible and they work to the mini-schedule using the annual project plan.

For legacy projects, the project plan, if it exists, was created well before the organization heard of or considered implementing a process improvement model like the CMMI. Consequently whatever exists was not developed per the current PP processes and there is no business value to go back and attempt to retrofit the old plan to the current process. What does make sense is for all project re-planning and re-baselining activities from this point forward to follow the new PP processes.