Applicability of SAM

Does Supplier Agreement Management (SAM) apply to the supplier? Suppose you're an organization that is supplying to another organization , for example to develop a software package. This organization is not using suppliers. I assume that SAM is not applicable to this organization. Is my assumption correct?

Your assumption is correct. But allow me to restate your scenario to avoid any confusion by using the word organization mulitple times in one sentence. Organization A develops a software package and delivers it to Organization B. Organization A does not use any suppliers or outsource any work. In this case Organization B is the acquiring organization and Organization A is the supplier organization. Therefore, SAM would apply to Organization B, but not to Organization A.

Levying CMMI Requirements on Your Suppliers

I would like to know whether or not an acquirer can specify a CMMI Maturity Level (ML) as a requirement in a call for tenders or invitation to public bidding. What the ML is required? What is the domain ? and for what kind of projects?

The answer is yes. The acquirer can specify any requirements they want the vendors to meet. In my experience, I have seen acquirers specifying that the bidders be either at ML 2 or ML 3. What this means though is that the acquirer has done its homework and appropriately determined the necessary Maturity Level for the vendor to support the acquirer’s business and quality goals and objectives. There should be a good match between the ML of the acquirer and the ML of the vendor, to work well it may be best if both organizations are at the same ML. Otherwise, there can be problems.

As the acquirer, you probably would find benefit from implementing the CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ). The CMMI-ACQ provides a lot of guidance for tenders and contracts that meet the acquirer’s needs.

CMMI-ACQ - Agreement Management

Agreement Management (AM) is a Maturity Level 2 (ML 2) Process Area (PA) in the CMMI-ACQ. Basically this PA is a more robust treatment of the CMMI-DEV PA Supplier Agreement Management (SAM) Specific Goal 2 (SG 2), Satisfy Supplier Agreements. The Specific Goal and most of the Specific Practices have the same titles between the two PAs. However, the details are quite different.

AM only has one Specific Goal - The terms of the supplier agreement are met by both the acquirer and the supplier. SAM uses the term project instead of acquirer. This difference means that AM is applied in a broader sense than SAM. SAM focusses on the project's needs for acquiring a product or service from a supplier. AM focusses on the acquirer, which may be
· Procurement
· Purchasing
· Outsourcing
· Supply chain
· Buyer
· Contracting
· Logistics
· Supply sourcing
etc.
Mike Phillips/SEI said in the CMMI-ACQ class that he has a list of 17 different terms for acquirer.