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Energizing CMMI |
O X F O R D S O F T W A R E E N G I N
E E R I N G |
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Getting CMMI to deliver on the promise:
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CMMI is recognized across the industry as a framework for
software development and management processes and a model for process
improvement. It has been adopted world wide by many and diverse software development
organizations. Along with this recognition CMMI is also gaining an
unfortunate reputation for poor return on investment. Despite careful
planning, the introduction of process improvements, methodical training, and
ongoing appraisals and process development the anticipated outcomes can be
slow to manifest as schedules slip, budgets escalate, ‘real’ work gets in the
way, and the benefits of organizational maturity keeps tantalizingly out of
reach. Something is not right. Too many organizations are taking too long, or
failing to reach their potential with CMMI. Some of this is due to the complexity and comprehensiveness of
the model (and the marked preference by users for the staged approach), some
to the expense of assessments, and some to the caution, timidity even, that
assessments expected to demonstrate organizational maturity tends to
encourage - but not all. Process improvement teams, whether internal to the
organization or contracted in from elsewhere, almost inevitably focus on the
requirements of the CMMI model and the desire to achieve recognized
organizational maturity. And this is no surprise, after all it is this that
is usually set as an objective and used as the indicator of success. There is
often little time, or inclination, to ensure that new CMMI compliant
processes work well or work well together, let alone better than those they
have replaced. Indeed it is often unclear what ‘better’ means or how this
would be determined; it is beyond the scope of any appraisal where conformance
and ‘reasonableness’ are the yardsticks. It is often thought that
‘performance’ can be determined later as part of ongoing improvement when
process monitoring and control are in place. This rarely happens. As a result process improvement work within the context of
CMMI is often of unknown or little real value and can actually damage
performance as model conformance issues and SCAMPI planning and preparation
dominate the SPI agenda, stifle innovation and inhibit useful change.
Critically, this will be recognized and noted by those affected by the work. You know CMMI is a powerful toolset for process improvement,
not a recipe book; it’s a specification for high performance system
development, not a design; it needs to be used, not copied. But somehow as work
proceeds the emphasis shifts… It doesn’t have to be this way. CMMI’s origins are in software engineering and software
process improvement where the driver was, literally, process improvement
leading to better organizational performance. And many of the tools for
improvement are built into CMMI. They just need to be found and used. To help you get the best from CMMI, to ensure CMMI delivers
value to your organization we are offering a new (and to our knowledge,
unique) service. We will work with you and your process improvement team to
ensure that process improvement undertaken within the context of CMMI does
exactly that – improve processes. By helping you establish a synergy
between demonstrating conformance - the enabler for much improvement work,
and better performance - the ultimate objective, we can help you reduce the
timescales and costs to achieve both. Using a performance oriented interpretation of CMMI and by
using and sharing a variety of specialist SPI techniques together with many
of the practices being put in place by your process improvement team (SPI is,
at its best, a pleasing bootstrapping exercise) we do what many process
improvement teams working within the context of CMMI, paradoxically, often
find very difficult – solve problems and deliver improvements that make sense
to your technical staff and have value to the business, and free your process
improvement team to focus on satisfying CMMI requirements. We will ensure
performance. If you want CMMI to work for you, to reduce your costs and
timescales, and see immediate improvements in development capability
and software and service quality please contact us now to
find out more. CCS July/November 2008 |
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© Copyright
OSEL 2009 |
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