What is Meant by a Line of Business?

In a CMMI 1.2 Appraisal there is a requirement that practices in projects and functions within the Organisational Unit must be understood and identified ( e.g. Lines of Business, Disciplines, Effort Types, Project Types etc). What do lines of Business and Effort Types mean?

It might be easier to understand the concept of a LIne of Business through an illustrative example.

A small organization would normally produce one type of product, say a voice recognition software package. This package may be installed on a variety of platforms, but it is the same package. In this situation the company or organization has one Line of Business.

In a large company or corporation, there usually is a number of different types of products produced for different purposes, customer types, etc. For example, an automotive company may have several divisions: car, truck, van, commercial vehicle, etc. Each division represents a different Line of Business. Or a financial company may have several divisions: banking, insurance, investments, etc. Again, each division is a different Line of Business. Typically each Line of Business has different goals and objectives, customers, processes, etc. Another example of a Line of Business is the application domain. It is important to note the different Lines of Business because it is extremely challenging, if not impossible, to conduct a single SCAMPI A appraisal across multiple Lines of Business, especially for Maturity Level 3 and up.

If you read the Method Description Document section 1.1.3 Implementation Guidance, it defines the terms you are asking about:

• application domains (or lines of business)
• geographical breadth
• disciplines (e.g., systems engineering, software engineering, or hardware engineering)
• effort types (e.g., development, maintenance, or services)
• project types (e.g., legacy or new development)
• customer types (e.g., commercial or government agency)
• lifecycle models in use within the organization (e.g., spiral, evolutionary, waterfall, or incremental)

So effort type refers to the type of work: new development, sustaining engineering or maintenance, or services.

Criteria for selection of Focus and Non Focus projects for CMMI 1.2 Assessment

What are the criteria used to determine project selection for CMMI 1.2 Appraisals? I understand they are normally termed as Focus and Non Focus projects.

1. Based on size of organization ( count of projects + resources ) how many projects need to be selected? Can someone specify this as a number of projects or percentage of projects required?
2. We have categorised projects as Development + Maintenance + Testing - so ideally how many projects count or percentage wise under each Project Type would need to be selected?
3. What is the criteria for selecting a project as a focus project? I have read and heard that one of the factors could be presence of all Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) phases in that project, contribution of data points, it should be an on-going project at time of assessment etc.

Here is the criteria for project selection extracted from section 1.1.3 of the Method Description Document (MDD) v1.2:

Sample projects and support groups selected to form the organizational scope (i.e., the combination of focus and non-focus projects and support functions) must represent all critical factors identified for the organizational unit to which the results will be attributed. The coverage of the organizational critical factors provided by these sample projects and support groups in the organizational scope in relation to the organizational unit must be documented, in quantitative terms, in the appraisal input and ADS.

Each sample project or support group in the planned organizational scope of the appraisal must be one of the three types listed below:

• Focus projects must provide objective evidence for every PA within the model scope of the appraisal which addresses model practices applicable to those projects.
• Non-focus projects must provide objective evidence for one or more PAs within the model scope of the appraisal which address practices performed on projects.
• Support functions must provide objective evidence for practices within the model scope of the appraisal that address organizational infrastructure or functions.

In appraisals where the reference model scope includes any project-related PA, the organizational scope must include at least one focus project. If the organizational unit includes more than 3 projects, then the organizational scope must include sufficient focus projects and non-focus projects to generate at least 3 instances of each practice in each project-related PA in the model scope of the appraisal.

Projects, categories, or groups/functions that are specifically excluded from the appraisal must be identified in the appraisal input and in the ADS as well as the justification for their exclusion. This identification includes legacy projects not using current organizational processes and projects waived from using current organizational processes. As needed, the appraisal team may seek clarification or data from other projects or support functions within the organizational unit. These projects or support functions must also be identified in the ADS.

What this means is that you must have at least one focus project. A focus project is a project that has evidence for every practice and Process Area (PA) in the appraisal scope. In order for that to be the case, that means the project is either already completed or very close to completion. A non-focus project is a project that does NOT have evidence for every practice and PA in the appraisal scope. Meaning a non-focus project is either a project that has recently started or a project that began before the processes were deployed and only has evidence for a subset of the practices.

Keep in mind that some PAs are organization level PAs while others are project-related. For the Organization PAs (e.g., OPF, OPD, OT, etc.) you only have to provide one instance of evidence. So the issue of number of projects only applies to the project-related PAs (e.g., PP, PMC, IPM, REQM, RD, etc.). Therefore, according to the MDD, if the organization has more than three projects, you have provide three instances of evidence for each practice. You could choose to supply three focus projects, two focus projects and multiple non-focus projects, or one focus project and multiple non-focus projects.

Another aspect of evidence that you must comply with is that you have to provide Direct Evidence for every practice and PA in the scope of the appraisal. But you don’t not have to supply Indirect Evidence for every practice and PA. Your Lead Appraiser can explain to you the one row, one column and 50% rules. As a risk mitigation, most of my clients choose to provide 100% coverage for both Direct and Indirect Evidence.

PMI PMBOK - CMMI Process Map

I often meet managers trained in the PMBOK and are certified PMPs (Project Management Professionals) who do not know enough about the CMMI but continue to press for using PMBOK as a guide in improving IT project management processes. I have studied the PMBOK and believe that the CMMI is a better option for managing IT projects. I can help PMPs understand my views better if I can show a map of processes in both the PMBOK and CMMI processes and then showing additional features of the CMMI helpful in managing IT projects. I would appreciate it if you could lead me to any such study where the two are mapped, something similar to the CMMI - ISO 9001:2000 map.

Try this link from the SEI http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2005cmmi/thursday/sherer.pdf, it will pull up a presentation that compares and contrasts the CMMI and PMBOK. In addition, this page http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/adoption/comparisons.html provides links to a number of comparisons between the CMMI and other models and standards.

Full Time Resources for Implementing the CMMI

I have been asked to estimate the number of full time resources required by my company to facilitate its drive to Maturity Level 3 PM, SYS, SW, HW and ACQ. Is there any documentation or published information that will help in putting together a robust estimate of resources required?

First and foremost the driving factor for estimating the number of full time resources needed to implement the CMMI is the size of the organization. Over time we have seen that it takes 3 – 5% of the organization to perform PPQA, 3- 5 % of the organization to perform CM, and 3 – 5% of the organization to perform the necessary CMMI implementation activities.

So, if your organization is about 20 – 30 people, then you may only need one full time resource. However, if your organization is about 100 people, then you may need 3 to 5 full time resources.

Other factors contributing to this estimate is how strong a ML 2 foundation is already in place and how much of what you currently have in place is at ML 3. Documenting the processes and procedures is the easy part, and it can be done by a small core group. The larger task is deploying the new processes and process assets and having people use them to change how they approach their jobs.

Interview Questions to Hire a CMMI Expert

We are implementing the CMMI within our organization and are looking to hire someone to help us achieve this goal. We don't necessarily need a certified Lead Appraiser as of yet, but would like to hire someone with CMMI experience and who may beinterested in becoming a Lead Appriaser. I have a couple of internal candidates that are not Lead Appraisers, but have had CMMI experience (according to their resumes anyhow). What would be some good questions to ask them in an interview to gauge how much experience they truly have? I appreciate any help I can get with this.

One word of caution first. It may not be in your best interests to hire someone who wants to become a Lead Appraiser. There usually aren’t enough internal appraisal opportunities for a candidate Lead Appraiser to get the minimum experience or to maintain their Lead Appraiser credentials, so the person would have to look for appraisal work outside of your organization or company.

Here are some questions that I would ask a candidate for a CMMI position:

1. Have you taken the SEI’s 3-day Introduction to CMMI class? If yes, when did you take the class? Who was your instructor?
2. Have you participated as an appraisal team member? If yes, how many times? What were your duties? What was the scope of the appraisal (Maturity Level)? Who was the Lead Appraiser? What would the Lead Appraiser say about your CMMI capabilities and performance on the appraisal team?
3. Have you helped implement the CMMI in an organization?
4. How long have you been working with the CMMI?
5. Please compare and contrast Capability Level vs. Maturity Level
6. What is the only Process Area that can be categorized as Not Applicable? SAM
7. Have you prepared a PIID? If yes, what was the most difficult task and why?
8. How many years of project management experience do you have?
9. How many years of engineering experience do you have?
10. What is your favorite Process Area and why?

Accepting Items for Use in the Process Asset Library

The Configurable Items (CI) in our organization are controlled CIs [Any Project Related Artifact (PRA) received from any source, on which the project team does not exercise any control]. For example, documents obtained from the client or reference technical material. Documents of external origin, such as the ISO Standard, SEI CMMI, etc. are controlled and managed.

Any Project Related Artifact (PRA) is created and managed by the project team and the changing of which does not need any explicit change request, for example, Software Configuration Plan, Review Plan, Audit Plans etc. A baselined CI is any PRA that is managed by the project team and changing it needs an explicit change request for example: Project Plan, SRS ( Software Requirements Specifications) etc.

I am the lead responsible for building our Process Asset Library (PAL) and would appreciate guidelines for what could be the mandatory or acceptable criteria by which the baselined CIs would be updated in the PAL for use by other groups in the organization. I feel, it would certainly help if the criteria could be defined so that people in the organization would know the parameters based on which they could help contribute or share best practices, lessons learned, and any other artifacts in the Process Asset Library for use by anyone in the organization.

I really hate to do this to you, but the answer to your question is it depends upon your needs. Your organization has to decide for itself the acceptance criteria for PAL items. The CMMI does not mandate any criteria for accepting input to the PAL.

From a practical standpoint, you want to encourage the practitioners, project teams, and managers to submit everything of use to you for consideration as candidate PAL items. As the lead responsible for building the PAL, you might consider reviewing each submitted item to determine if you want it in the PAL. I always advocate that in addition to providing a template in the PAL for use by the project teams that you also provide an example of how you want the template to be correctly filled out. Providing a good example can be problematic sometimes. So you would have to review each submitted artifact of the completed template to determine if you want to post that as an example in the PAL. Other project related information may need to be sanitized or normalized by you before you post it to the PAL for use by existing or new projects.

If someone wanted to share a best practice or make a process improvement suggestion, then you should have a process in place for allowing someone to submit a process change. Many companies use their established product/project Change Request system as the tool for submitting Process Change Requests.

The Bottom Line is that you should encourage and accept all data, information, and input as candidate PAL items. Then the Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG), Engineering Process Group (EPG), or Process Group (PG) reviews the input for inclusion in the PAL.

Supplier Agreement Management Question

I have a question related to Supplier Agreement Management (SAM) SP 2.2 - Monitor Selected Supplier Processes. What is the basic intent of this practice and in what scenario does it fit in? It specifies "...situations of tight alignment between processes implemented by the supplier and those of the project..." - which is normally not the case in most (small) projects (as I know). I hope here we are not including "Acceptance" and "Transition" as aligned processes. Also it seems redundant to me with SP 2.1 - Execute the Supplier Agreement because in the contract/ SOW, it is usually mentioned how the supplier needs to monitor his processes (frequency to perform process audits etc.) and the frequency/condition when the customer may ask for a process audit/assessment. So doesn't executing the Supplier agreement covers these two practices?

I can see where you might have some confusion concerning these two SAM practices. SAM SP 2.1 says “Perform activities with the supplier as specified in the supplier agreement.” And your confusion comes about from sub-practice 1 “Monitor supplier progress and performance (schedule, effort, cost, and technical performance) as defined in the supplier agreement.” In essence SAM SP 2.1 is all about performing Project Monitoring and Control (PMC) over the supplier, which should be spelled out in the supplier agreement. You are basically acting as the Project Manager for the supplier by monitoring and controlling their project and technical performance. There is no intent to perform any Process and Product Quality Assurance (PPQA) audits or activities to support this practice.

In contrast SAM SP 2.2 says “Select, monitor, and analyze processes used by the supplier.” This practice is where you perform PPQA activities (process audits and work product audits) on selected supplier processes that are critical to the success of your project and business. Again, this ability to perform PPQA on the supplier must be specified in the supplier agreement. But you want to have the freedom to select any supplier process, so don’t indicate specific processes in the supplier agreement. For example you might decide to monitor and analyze how your supplier performs peer reviews or how they manage their requirements. If you have your supplier doing small projects (less than a month in duration) you may not have many opportunities to perform PPQA on a given supplier project. This situation is the same as when you have small projects done completely in house. There is no hope or expectation that you will be able to perform PPQA activities on every small project.

Look back at my blog on PPQA Audit Frequency http://ppqc.blogspot.com/2008/05/ppqa-audit-frequency.html for a simple way to adjust the frequency of the PPQA audits based on the quality issues discovered. You can use this same approach to determine the frequency of conducting PPQA activities on your supplier, assuming that you supplier regularly performs small projects for you.