Real Process Improvement Using the CMMI

Now that you ve read about the most important aspects of planning and managing a CMMI process improvement project, here are some but not all of the lessons in abbreviated form.

Do

• Reuse as much as possible.

• Make sure everyone is speaking the same language as a prerequisite to starting the CMMI process improvement project.

• Use appraisals or other methods to characterize the organization s current state of process implementation to determine the starting point for process improvement.

• Align the business goals for process improvement (desired state) with the higher level organizational goals or strategy.

• Employ proven project management techniques to planning and managing the organization s CMMI process improvement project because they work.

• Understand that the process improvement project team will need different skills and knowledge at different times in the project s life cycle.

• Recognize and plan for having very little room to maneuver in trading cost, quality, and schedule in a CMMI-based process improvement project.

• In developing and delivering a process system, make sure the project team and stakeholders always exhibit the behaviors they expect to see in others.

Don t

• Don t assume and don t let others assume that your organization must invent its own way to implement CMMI-based processes.

• Don t think that CMMI-based process improvement must be managed differently than software or systems projects.

• Don t spend hundreds of thousands of your organization s dollars if CMMI or process improvement work cannot be correlated with any of the organization s business goals.