Why Would I Need a CMMI Expert?

If my organization is already doing something and my results are in order, what is the value of me picking up something that I am doing and saying that this is what fulfils the requirement of configuration audits or for that matter any other practice.  Why do I need a specific (CMMI) legal expert to do the hair splitting and argue that what I do indeed meets CMMI requirements and three other who say it does not?  I would be keen to understand how my organization, or for that matter any other organization in the community, would be better off.


If you are able to identify that what you are doing satisfies the practice, then you are correct in that you don’t need a CMMI expert to tell you that your practice meets the CMMI.  However, in my experience, since people look at the CMMI as a requirements specification, they have difficulty determining that some of their practices are in fact CMMI compliant and therefore take steps to implement additional, and perhaps non-value added, redundant practices to “pass” the appraisal. Therefore it is important to have a CMMI consultant and/or Lead Appraiser perform  a gap analysis to determine if the organization has made the proper interpretations of the CMMI in their implementation.



On the surface the CMMI is a simple model, but the more you study it, you find additional layers of complexity that can lead to misunderstandings or extra non-value added practices.



I would maintain that if you were only using the CMMI for helping you identify areas for process improvement, were not interested in being appraised, and you had some internal process improvement specialists who are knowledgeable of the CMMI, ISO, etc., then you most likely would not need to use an external CMMI expert.  However, if your goal is to be appraised to the CMMI, then it is vitally important to work with a CMMI consultant and/or Lead Appraiser.



One last point, you refer to a CMMI legal expert.  That is a telling statement.  In my experience, even when I encounter CMMI Lawyers in an organization, they lose sight of the purpose of the CMMI and process improvement.  They are more interested in “what if” scenarios.  Such as What if I do this or write this document, will that be CMMI compliant?  The focus is more on explicitly covering all of the CMMI requirements rather than doing what is beneficial to the organization’s business practices.  And if you find yourself or others in your organization splitting hairs over whether a practice meets or doesn’t meet the CMMI, you have probably lost sight of what you are trying to do from a process improvement perspective.  You should be keeping things as simple as possible for your organization, and the hair splitting comes into play when your implementation may be too complex.


Hope this explanation helps.

Process Improvement vs. Process Maintenance

An organization on its process improvement journey may include process maintenance activities under the heading of process improvement. Most organizations do that. As far as I know, CMMI does not talk of process maintenance activities. To me, a few examples of process maintenance activities are those required for metrics data collection, project monitoring, process definition, making plans, etc. On the other hand, process improvement will include activities like metrics data analysis, identifying significant variations from planned arrangement, process re-definition based on improvement suggestions and metrics analysis, revising the plans in line to changing requirements, and taking appropriate preventive and/or corrective actions.

Are there any benchmarks for healthy process maintenance vs. improvement activities for software organizations?

These two concepts in inextricably intertwined. I would find it hard to believe that an organization does not identify any process improvement suggestions by just doing process maintenance. Even if you are just maintaining your Maturity Level, you will still identify improvements to the status quo. And I contend that even for process maintenance you have to perform data analysis, identify variations, and identify appropriate corrective actions, otherwise how would you be able to determine that you are maintaining what you have already achieved? I do not understand the need to define these two items as separate activities. What would be the point of merely maintaining your processes?

Need Some Clarification About Process Improvement

What types of activities should be considered process improvement? If we modify the templates (any major changes), do we categorize these changes as process improvement?

Merely modifying a template may or may not constitute process improvement. Your template may have changed because of external reasons (your customer wants you to use a different template) that have nothing to do with process improvement. You should explain the rationale for modification, then you would have a stronger case to demonstrate process improvement.

Process improvement suggestions can come from any number of sources:

1. Appraisal findings
2. PPQA audit findings
3. Lessons learned
4. Employee suggestions

If you couple the source of the process improvement suggestion with the actual change, usually spelled out in the Process Improvement Plan, then you have the information you need.

Process Improvement Measures

Do you have any suggestions for a size and quality measure for a Process Improvement organization?

There are other questions that need to be answered first in order to provide a proper response to your question. What does your Process Improvement process say? Examine your process to see what type of activities you have documented, where are the spots in the process you can collect data, and what data you can collect. You also have to consider your business goals and objectives for your Process Improvement organization. Then you will have some idea of the measures you can use for size and quality of your Process Improvement effort. Experts can offer you all different ideas, but if these ideas don’t support your goals and/or your process is written in such a way that it doesn’t support these measures, then you will have to consider something else.

Reducing the Time it Takes to Review a Document

I have problem. Currently we are taking 12 minutes to summarize articles that are published in our newsletter. Can you suggest how can we reduce the processing time to 8 minutes?

Without having any insight at all into your process, I cannot provide you a solution. However, if you want to shorten the process time, here are the steps I would follow:

1. First answer the question why you want to shorten the process time. Is this desire driven by your business goals and objectives and/or your process goals and objectives?
   
2. If the answer is yes, then define and document your process.
   
3. Define, collect, and analyze appropriate process measures that can be used to understand your process time.
   
4. Analyze the process to determine which step or steps are the major drivers for the current process time of 12 minutes.
   
5. Pilot different process step changes that could result in shortening your process time to 8 minutes and still meet your business goals and objectives and your process goals and objectives.
   
6. Based on this analysis, change your process.

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.

Process Improvement - A Twelve Step Process

1. We admitted we were powerless over quality/on-time delivery/estimates/project management/etc. – that our projects had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a model greater than ourselves (the CMMI) could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our processes and procedures over to the care of Software Engineering Institute.
4. We conducted a searching and fearless gap analysis of our organization.
5. We admitted to our Lead Appraiser, to ourselves, and to our executive management the exact nature of our process weaknesses and gaps.
6. We were entirely ready to have our Lead Appraiser help us address these weaknesses and gaps.
7. We humbly asked our Lead Appraiser to help us remove our weaknesses.
8. We made a list of all projects that had suffered because of our bad practices, and became willing to take corrective actions to address the issues, as applicable.
9. We made direct modifications to our processes wherever possible, except when to do so would jeopardize the success a project.
10. We continued to appraise the organization, and when we had weaknesses we promptly admitted them.
11. We sought through the Engineering Process Group (EPG) and the Management Steering Group (MSG), to improve our direct contact with our Lead Appraiser and the SEI, asking only for their knowledge and expertise to guide us on our process improvement journey.
12. We have recognized the benefits of process improvement as the result of these twelve steps; we have tried to carry this message to other internal groups and external organizations and to practice these principles in all our affairs.