I’m just about to leave for the airport, I hope to see you all there; Booth 16.
Best regards,
Dave Greer
With the completion of the re-purchase, Assess-IT is once again an SEI Partner for the delivery of official SEI branded CMMI/SCAMPI Appraisal and Training services.
There’s an interesting post going around LinkedIn regarding whether it’s permissible for the Lead Appraiser and the process improvement consultant to come from the same company. I think the more relevant question is whether it’s professional/ethical for the Lead Appraiser and the process improvement consultant to come from the same company. The SEI has identified the minimum requirements for professional and ethical behavior in the Code of Professional Conduct. It’s clearly “legal” but it’s also clearly not good practice. Just my two cents.
Institutionalization – It’s just the way we do it here, Maturity Level by Maturity Level.
- Initial/Performed (ML1/CL1) – The work is done, the work products are produced, the Goals are satisfied. You have smart people doing good stuff.
- Managed (ML2) – The work is done according to a plan, the people are available and skilled/trained, adequate resources are assigned/acquired, identified work products are created, stored, evaluated and ultimately delivered, the work is monitored and controlled, and senior management takes an interest in the project throughout its lifecycle. ML2 is focused at the project level – Similar projects may do similar things dis-similarly.
- Defined (ML3) – All of the above, and there are documented characteristics and attributes that process descriptions possess: Purpose, Roles, Inputs and Entry Criteria, Process Steps, Outputs and Exit Criteria, Measures, Verification Steps, Job Aids (templates, fill-in guides, samples, tools, training, etc.). ML3 is focused at the organization level – Similar projects do similar things similarly, with allowable tailoring for the specific needs of projects.
Institutionalization is not how long the processes have been documented, but rather how ingrained into the organization’s operational methodology.
Institutionalization is codified in the CMMI’s Generic Practices. No matter how many smart people you have doing good stuff (Specific Practices), unless you Institutionalize (embrace the Generic Practices) you’ll never be other than ML1/CL1.
A brief word about Processes in general. Processes need to be targeted at the appropriate segment of your organization. I’ve often seen too many and too bloated processes. The basic guidance is that processes are not meant to enable people who walk in off the street to become computational fluid dynamicists; that’s the role of universities. Processes are meant to enable similarly skilled and experienced individuals to perform similar tasks similarly, such that they achieve similar results.
The Generic Practices of the CMMI lead to institutionalization of the following concepts.
Policy
- It is not enough for senior management to just talk about process
- Senior management must be continuous, visible, advocates for doing it the right way
- If senior management does not get out in front of the process improvement initiative, people will soon figure out that it is not that important and it will fall by the wayside until the next new best thing comes along; it might be perceived as the flavor of the month phenomenon we see in organizations that are struggling for a magical solution.
Planning
- Who (actor and role)
- What (what the project is to accomplish)
- How (the process steps for converting the project’s inputs into outputs)
- When (schedule)
- How Well (objective quality standards and measures)
- Where (do they stage their intermediate and final work products)
- With What (samples, tools, checklists, guidelines, etc.)
- Where (do they get help)
Resources
- People (empowered, trained, available)
- Tools (hardware, software, job aids)
- Environments (proper working spaces, labs, etc.)
Training
- Availability is not a skill (process training and appropriate skills are needed)
- Organizational (what process training is the responsibility of the organization)
- Home Organization (what specific skills training is ones home organization responsible for)
- Project Training (new tools or processes that are for the primary benefit of the project)
- Individual (what must the individual do to make themselves a valuable, contributing member of the company)
Configuration Management
- All work products ought to be placed under some level of control
- Changes must be authorized
- Changes must be controlled
- Audits must be performed to ensure the documentation matches the work products, which may be documents themselves
Teamwork
- All work is accomplished by teams
- Teams must be managed to effectively develop the synergy that makes teams more powerful than the sum of their parts
- Teams must be empowered and authorized to do what they are tasked to do
Measure
- Without developing a quantitative understanding of project status it is difficult to determine if a project is on track
- Without developing a quantitative understanding of what your processes are doing for you, it is easy to fool yourself into thinking process change is the same as process improvement
- Measures may be both qualitative and quantitative
Control
- Project and senior management must effectively steer the project according to the data they are collecting, both qualitative and quantitative data should be used
- When the data indicate the current state is significantly different from the predicted or desired state, the project manager must take control
- Typically the project manager may change the staffing, scoping, or scheduling
Process Assurance
- The CMMI focuses on process improvement as the basis for improving the results of projects
- It is, therefore, essential that the processes are executed as documented.
- If a different process is followed each time, it is impossible to gather data on how following the process is really helping you
Product Quality
- It is not enough just to follow the processes, it is also essential that following the processes enables you to do better work
Status
- Gathering data from multiple sources allows a project manager to develop a composite picture of the project that can be viewed from many vantage points
- This multiple view picture gives the project manager a better understanding of the project and the ability to make projections about its future
Standardization
- Following standards allows the project to do the same things the same way over and over again.
- This repeatability permits the projects and organization to develop data over a period of time that allows for prediction of future similar projects
Improvement
- Using the collected data collected over a period of time allows the organization to improve their processes to ensure the best possible process is being used for each project in the present and for the future
I’m still surprised at how many clients have the misperception that they have to rearchitect their processes to be CMMI compliant. There is nothing in the model that says you have to contort yourselves into some CMMI shaped box to comply with the guidelines in the model. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to do so and still carry on with your business model. The CMMI is written as functional stovepipes (in alphabetical order), and your company processes, in all likelihood, are written to accomodate your business pursuit and delivery lifecycles.
The real trick to becoming CMMI compliant is to capture all of your business and technical processes, arrange them in some reasonable lifecycle order, then map that order to the CMMI to see where you have adequate model coverage and where you don’t, develop a set of plans to address the gaps, and finally implement the plans to close the gaps.
If you have one monolithic Project Management process that addresses all the practices in the PP, PMC, IPM, and RSKM PAs, so be it. Don’t go rearranging everything to match the model. Put together a mapping matrix that allows you to keep everything where it is, while at the same time allowing you to check yourselves against the model’s guidelines.
Quite a few clients are surprised by the cost of a SCAMPI Appraisal. While a SCAMPI Appraisal may seem expensive, when considered within the context of what it costs to implement a process improvement program within an organization, well, a SCAMPI Appraisal is CHEAP, relatively speaking.
Industry data show that a Process Improvement (PI) effort takes on the order of a 5-7% investment of resources: planning, improving, training, measuring, estimating, quality assurance, configuration management, status, etc. Essentially 5 FTEs of your 100 FTE organization need to be dedicated to your PI effort. Similarly, PI will take 5 weeks of effort on your 100 week project and $5K will be spent on your $100K project. Industry data also show that you can expect to receive on the order of a 4:1 Return On Investment (ROI).
If you create a process group early on, and allocate the 5-7% that we expect it to take, when it comes time for the appraisal, you’ve already got the appraisal resources you need, without taking away from billable work at the always critical stage. The other people in the organization will also realize that senior management takes this effort seriously by their demonstrated and not just verbalized commitment to the effort.
PI, if it’s really important to your organization, needs to be treated like any other important project. To not give it the benefit of “Real Project” status is to all but doom it to failure. “Real Projects” get real project managers, they have Work Breakdown Structures (WBSs)/Task Lists/Deliverables, they have identified staff who are committed to the effort at a negotiated effort level at a specific frequency of interaction over a particular duration, real projects get budget, schedule, resources, training, standard processes, and senior management face time.
So . . .How much does an appraisal really cost; IT DEPENDS 
In a typical 300 person development organization it takes roughly 3 to 4 people to generate $1M in revenue. So our hypothetical organization is generating $75-$100M. A 5% commitment to PI would be $7.5-$10M. Please feel free to substitute your own numbers.
A 4:1 ROI benefit to the organization would be $30-$40M or 4 times the $7.5M investment (almost 50% equivalent improvement organizationally) in reduced waste, greater throughput capability, more profitability, increased customer satisfaction, fewer defects, faster turn-around time, etc.
A fully featured appraisal with all the bells and whistles, planning, training, consulting, paperwork, materials, travel, etc., should cost on the order of $100K. A $100K appraisal investment against a $10M PI Project investment is 1%. If your current project estimating methodology is not producing estimates that are accurate to within 1% of the actual outcomes, I can legitimately (tongue in cheek) make the argument, using your data, that the appraisal is free, because the margin of error exceeds the appraisal cost.
Get Started Now, things will never really change until you change them.
