Real Process Improvement Using the CMMI

Now that you ve read this chapter, you have hopefully learned some new ways to think about CMMI-based process improvement and maybe you have even challenged some of the perceptions or closely held beliefs you have had about the way you work with CMMI.

Here s the summary checklist of do s and don ts to serve as a reminder of the major concepts presented in this chapter.

Do

• Before you apply CMMI-based process improvement toward achieving your organization s goals or addressing systems engineering problems, make sure you and all the decision makers truly understand the goals and comprehend the root causes of the problems.

• Recognize that CMMI may not be the best or only way to address organizational goals or resolve systems engineering problems.

• Recognize that when you use CMMI to implement process improvements, the product you will deliver is a system, specifically a process system, and that the project to deliver the process system will experience the same cost, schedule, and quality issues that are always faced by all systems delivery projects.

• When starting process improvement, look for existing processes, practices, and work products which show potential for being incrementally improved (nurtured) and grown into viable process assets as part of the CMMI program.

• Understand the different ways organizations and people learn new things. Realize that putting new processes and procedures into people s hands and expecting them to instantly perform those processes, which is online learning, is the most expensive and least effective form of learning.

• Think about the meta- components of CMMI for a more effective approach to designing, developing, and implementing the CMMI-based process system.

Don t

• Don t assume that CMMI is the panacea for all systems engineering problems or that it is the silver bullet for achieving the organization s business goals.

• If the organization applies CMMI-based process improvement to resolving software or systems engineering problems or achieving business goals, and it accomplishes neither , don t just keep doing more of the same.

• In delivering process improvement, don t play with the delivered quality of the process system. The only three areas in which you really have room to move are cost, schedule, and the development process.

• Don t assume that just because a practice, process, or work product exists prior to the introduction of CMMI in the organization that it isn t worth saving and using in the CMMI-based improvement effort.

• Avoid following the traditional vertical or silo approach to process design, definition, and implementation.