July 27, 2010

Start with the end in mind – bring appraisal preparation forward

Posted by Regis Blandin under CMMI, Process Improvement, project management | Tags: , , , |
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I’m still often surprised to find organisations delivering CMMI without application of project management discipline.  As well as not “walking the talk” an unstructured approach decreases the chance of the organisation getting return on its investment.  That’s a wider topic for another time; today I want to share a practical tip, derived from sound project management.

Bring appraisal preparation forward early into your CMMI journey.

At some point in your CMMI journey you will conduct a formal appraisal.  Perhaps a SCAMPI A, if achieving a rating is a business goal; alternatively, a rigorous, evidence-based SCAMPI B may suffice if you just want to objectively evidence the business improvement made.  You will need to collect evidence for each of the CMMI practice requirements within scope.  By the time the appraisal starts, you will have prepared a comprehensive file, mapping the evidence to the CMMI practices.

My tip is simple and based on experience of what’s worked: bring this appraisal preparation forward early into your CMMI journey.  What does this involve? 

I run a series of workshops, structured around the CMMI process areas in scope.  In the workshop (for example Project Planning), I walk through the CMMI practices with the operational people from the relevant functions and projects.  For each practice we agree exactly what evidence will be provided by that project or function to demonstrate that the practice requirement is met.  Taking a coaching stance and getting the project people to think about what they do that meets the practice requirements is a great way of transferring detailed knowledge of what the model is expecting to see: making it real.  The output of the workshops is effectively a specification of “how we do CMMI in this project/function”.

The workshop can be followed by technical assurance on the evidence to confirm that it does indeed meet the practice requirements.   Before the appraisal itself, the evidence will be refreshed for currency – for example replacing a historic status report with a more current status report.

If you see your appraisal as your major milestone, then this approach manages the risk of failing to achieve the milestone.  You identify any areas where operational practice falls short of the CMMI requirements at a point when there is enough time to fix.

In terms of timing, don’t leave these workshops too late.  However, a level of CMMI understanding and operational maturity needs to be in place before the workshops are successful.  Otherwise you will risk “missing the wood for the trees”.  An organisation that is just starting with CMMI should be focusing on fixing the big gaps.  Workshops like I describe can follow about six months into the journey.

 

July 23, 2010

Software Development Project planning and estimating survey

Posted by Andrew Griffiths under CMMI
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Way back in 2004 Lamri ran a series of seminars focussed on the business of planning and estimating software development projects.  We preceded each seminar with a short survey and then published the conclusions after the seminar as a resource on the Lamri website.  I think news yesterday of challenges on the ‘Trusted Borders’ project prompted me to wonder if the state of the art as actually practiced has moved on since 2004.  So with your permission I include the same survey questions we asked back in 2004.  They are simple and short so I invite you to complete the survey by answering each question and hitting ‘Vote’ after each.  I’ll write up the results in a few weeks and post back.  Many thanks in advance!

Thank you very much for completing this short poll.  I do confess it is simplistic but its the same questions we asked back in 2004 so for consistencies sake ….  By the way if you are interested in seeing our 2004 report have a look here at Major Challenges to Software Projects Survey.

 

July 23, 2010

Buying CMMI services

Posted by Andrew Griffiths under CMMI
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I have spent the better part of my working life in the process improvement business working as an internal change leader, a consultant and as a salesman.

Over the years I have seen some interesting situations relating to the procurement of process improvement and CMMI services and I just thought I would put together a summary of my two personal favorites :

Consulting services are not paperclips

I bet you are thinking this is a little obvious, but believe me it isn’t to everyone.  The number of times clients write up RFPs / RFQs with their approach to applying something which they do not have the right skills and experience to deliver is amazing.  The requests can read something like:

“Acme company have a target to achieve CMMI ML3 we have never done this before and we lack the internal skills.  Please give us a firm price for the execution of the attached project plan and by the way we would like to hold you accountable for the successful delivery of CMMI ML3.

PS the right answer is £XXXX if its more than that, its bigger than the budget we had approved for this and you will be qualified out of the procurement process”

I bet some of you are smiling now… Interesting situation this.  The client clearly has failed to consult with the market and build at least a modicum of internal knowledge such that an effective procurement can be done.  They will make the wrong choice.  Any supplier who tells them the truth about their situation runs the real risk of being qualified out at the first hurdle.  Those who say nothing or say “yes Mr Client” will be left in the process.   There is only one outcome, the price will be change controlled up by the supplier…. but not on day one…. when the client is completely committed to the supplier.  My policy is to be straight with clients about this and, more often than not, it gets you kicked out of the process in round one!  However, we are often picking up the pieces of these poor procurements when the client feels the pain of their choice at a later date.

The mechanic problem

Why is it that when you have completed a baseline appraisal of an organisation where you clearly identify all the gaps in their capability they feel the need to tell you how to go about fixing them?  Its a little bit like going to a garage with your car and saying:

“There a problem with the steering at 40 mph and it shakes can you please diagnose the problem”

and after the garage diagnoses the problem as a faulty steering rack you say:

“Actually I think the most effective way to fix this is…….”

No one feels the need to tell their mechanics how they should approach fixing the car, why do IT professionals feel that they know how to fix problems that have often been endemic in their organisation for years?  The more surprising perspective on this is that their company has paid for professional advice on addressing an issue why try to undermine it?

I guess part of the problem is with a car if you look at an engine and you know you don’t know what you are looking at and you know you need help.  IT professionals think they know how the engine works but they do not know the process of fixing it and for some reason they think this is easy.

Another way of thinking about this is:

If you change someone’s way of working how long will it take?

  • You need to design the change
  • You need to communicate the change
  • You need to check that they have changed
  • You need to alter the quality system to lock in the change
  • Maybe some of the people need some close support as their capabilities need improving

How long is that?

 

July 22, 2010

Large Government IT Solutions

Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI | Tags: , , |
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Another one bites the dust or so it seems – according to BBC News the lead contractor on the UK Trusted Boarder has just been let go.

I guess my reaction is firstly a suprised “wow where did that come from” as even up to the end of last year the programme was moving to schedule according to reports in Hansard and Computing.

However on thinking about this one realises that this illustrates one of the classic symptoms of immature programme governance, i.e. “the eleventh hour show stopper that seems to emerge from nowhere”.

There is a clear need beautifully articulated by the never ending procession of significant issues with Government sponsored “big IT Solutions” for a systemic approach to ensuring lessons are learned and the capability of customer and supplier to incept, manage and deliver these programmes dramatically improved.

We only have to look across the water to the US sponsored CMMI (for acquisition and development) for a piece of the answer.

 

July 21, 2010

Adopt a “sales perspective” to measuring customer satisfaction

Posted by Frank Johnstone under Process Improvement | Tags: , , , , |
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In this context, we’re interested in the perception of senior executives who pay the bills rather than the end users.  Senior executives know the business objectives: a system that is unfriendly to use may be fine if it was cheap and delivered fast.

The customer survey can be approached from two perspectives: “quality” or “sales”.

The quality perspective prioritises obtaining accurate measurements results, which can be analysed and to identify process improvements.  Implementing the process improvements should better customer satisfaction.

The quality perspective is exemplified in government contracts, where the customer satisfaction surveying may be conducted independently by the Office of Government Commerce.  One major systems integrator recently switched responsibility for customer satisfaction measurement to its quality group to avoid their customer relationship managers influencing the scores upwards.  With mixed results: some customers do not want to see an unfamiliar face; to them, introducing the quality group has just complicated their supplier relationships.

Organisations that adopt the sales perspective set out to influence the scores upwards.  Here, the survey could never be completed by the customer offline and would not involve the quality group on the front line; it is completed during a discussion between an account manager (salesperson) and the customer.

The account manager goes in prepped on the successes of the contractor or IT department and understanding of what’s gone wrong.  The account manager presents “what we’ve done for you”.  The customer then provides feedback.  The account manager tries to mitigate negative points.  Following discussion the customer scores his or her satisfaction.

An in house IS department was getting feedback so negative it was almost vitriolic through a survey developed from the quality perspective.  They redesigned the survey from the sales perspective.  Customer satisfaction went up quickly and substantively.  Here’s why:

  1. The conversation around the survey gave the customers a different perspective.  They saw that supposed cost overruns were directly attributable to them introducing new scope.  And actually, architected solutions did enable them to launch new products faster, as well as increasing the cost first time round.
  2. The conversation around the survey was rich: it explored themes and ideas.  The qualitative feedback elicited drove innovative process improvements.
  3. Finally, because the conversation was a positive experience, the customer ceased regarding the survey as a meaningless tick box exercise and started to see IS’s genuine desire to improve.  Doing the survey directly improved satisfaction.
 

July 19, 2010

CMMI – The Buyers Friend – part 2

Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI
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Just a short post building on my previous thoughts.  I’ve found the following helpful “Guide to Supplier Appraisals” on Supply Management’s website at http://www.supplymanagement.com/resources/how-to/guide-to-supplier-appraisal/.  Its written from the professional buyer’s perspective and discusses a rationale for when it would be appropriate to appraise one’s potential suppliers.  Within the context of this community – appraisals often comprise commercial scrutiny, evidence of quality standards such as ISO and some evidence of technical and managerial competence.  From my perspective an interesting point is that clearly the buying community understand how challenging largely bespoke IT developments can be.  They also appreciate that its abundantly good practice to put prospective supplier’s under considerable scrutiny.   On the other hand over in our Development pond it is a truism demonstrated with concrete evidence that CMMI does improve and does drive improved predictability, reliability etc.  In other words a large slug of the characteristics that our professional buyer is looking for.  Why then are these two worlds so far apart? Why when assessing appropriate IT Development “heavy” acquisitions does the buying community not make use of focussed CMMI assessments to gain an deeper understanding of a prospective supplier’s actual capability to deliver the “thing” they are bidding to deliver?  I appreciate there have been scattered instances of this but the curious point (to my mind) is that nowhere on the professional procurement related sites is this outlined – even if just from the perspective of here is a useful tool given the appropriate environment.   As ever thoughts welcome …

 

July 15, 2010

CMMI – The Buyer’s Friend?

Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI, CMMI-ACQ, CMMI-DEV
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CMMI has always struck me as a bit of a funny old thing.   What I mean by that is that to those ‘bought in’ to process based working and best practice it is almost literally a no brainer – to almost everyone else it is like luxury goods – take it or leave it the world will go on.   An area that we have gained little traction in is in the area of acquisition support.   Just google the words supplier appraisal or supplier assessment and there are loads of helpful sites that speak from the perspective of the procurement/acquisition professional and discuss those acquisitions where the ability to really understand the true technology development capability of a potential supplier is critical to the acquisition decision but also to helping the acquiring organisation really appreciate the risk associated with that acquisition.   They discuss how the procurement team will often incorporate one or more relevant technical experts who will often perform some element of technical due-diligence on the prospective supplier.

From my (almost certainly heavily biased perspective) this strikes me as yes but.   ‘Yes’ for acquisitions that contain technology which is reasonably straightforward.   ‘But’ for acquisitions where the technology is novel, the product critically dependent on it, perhaps the requirements not fully understood and the supplier’s capability to deliver being critical to success.   In this latter environment there is an approach that will provide more transparency and objectivity.   Instead of relying on the good experience of a small number of individuals wouldn’t it be helpful to incorporate the experience of thousands and use an assessment method that is truly objective?

This is where CMMI comes in.   CMMI incorporates best practice taken from literally hundreds of successful developments (worldwide) and condenses that experience into a crisply articulated set of requirements that good technology development process should meet (so defining what your processes should achieve not how they achieve it).   The model comprises best practice for technical and management processes combined with best practice for ensuring an organisation’s processes are widely adopted and enduring – not just a flash in the pan. Coupled to this is a rigorous assessment method called SCAMPI, with individuals who are highly trained, licensed and quality monitored in their application of it.

So putting these ingredients together means that when the development capability of a supplier is critical to an acquisition then incorporating a CMMI assessment of the short-list or preferred bidder allows the acquisition team to build a truly informed picture of the real technical capability of the supplier.   In today’s cost conscious climate perhaps using this approach to enhance due diligence may go some small way to reducing the number of large technology focussed acquisitions that fail to meet expectations?

 

July 5, 2010

We know we got better but we can’t prove it

Posted by Frank Johnstone under CMMI, Process Improvement
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Always frustrating when an organisation knows it has got better but can’t back this up with improved performance metrics. This happens for one of three reasons:

1. Performance metrics are avoided as being too hard. The organisation may instead collect, but not use, what is most easily collectable. Often output from tools.

2. A sophisticated metrics repository is considered prerequisite to collecting performance metrics. This achieves the same result as (1), quite possibly wasting £500k on the way.

3. Performance metrics are deferred to late in the improvement journey, by which time much of the improvement has happened. The excellent Steve Haighway from BT has talked about this phenomenon.

Any project delivery organisation investing in process improvement that is NOT collecting performance metrics should rectify this before July is out!  Why July?  Well this is so urgent you need to start now and you can get it up and running within one month.

The following are a great starting point:

Project predictability: % variance from original scheduled delivery date and budget.

What about when the delivery date or budget change? OK. If the reason is the customer (that means the customer funds the change not just we say “it’s the customer’s fault”), then the budget and schedule are rebaselined. If the customer is not funding the change then the actual delivery date and cost at completion are compared against the original delivery date and budget.

What about organisations with internal customers who always pay for the change regardless of why it happened? Again, that’s not a barrier. Several organisations in this situation have adopted most basic rules for classifying changes as customer initiated or self-inflicted by the project delivery organisation.

Customer satisfaction: Using the “quality is meeting and exceeding customer expectations” viewpoint, this is a great complement to project predictability. Do collect the data from the real customer: the senior executive who understands the business objectives for the delivery and pays the bill. (This is not a user survey).

Projects stopped: The first two metrics are about “doing a project right”. This one gets thinking going about “doing the right projects”. Organisations with external customers should choose not to bid for uneconomic work. Organisations with internal customers should refuse to start projects if the requirements are so poorly understood that delivering something that meets customer expectation is a matter of chance. If every bid becomes a project or every project is passed through governance then there may well be a problem. Start monitoring this now and have a look.

Of course there are many more equally meaningful and perhaps more useful metrics to choose from.  Remember I’m speaking with those organisations doing process improvement but not collecting performance metrics and their task is to remedy this by the end of July.

 

July 2, 2010

How the Wind Blows

Posted by John Evans under Change Management, Uncategorized
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I have been commenting on the anti-patterns that hinder successful delivery of business changes. I’m sure that we have all mused about the kind of things that hinder our day to day working. The one I want to discuss today is my personal favourite as the one thing that is guaranteed to cause calamity and a trail of devastation in it’s wake. The dreaded shake up of senior management. This has been brought in to stark relief following the recent changes in government, leaving the people on the ground to deal with the consequences of a drastic change in direction.

My own thoughts on this subject are a little closer to home relating to changes that I see over and over throughout the many clients that I visit or colleagues deal with.

In most organisations where change is successful, there is a strong business driver for change, which is understood and agreed upon in the higher management. This is cascaded down through the organisation and a change plan is developed to make that change happen. The old ways of working are deemed to be unacceptable and the senior management require that the new ways of working are adopted.

 However when the senior management re-organises and the business driver is absent, either by virtue of the re-organisation or lack of agreement then the organisation is at the mercy of the new incumbent and their preferred method of working, generally little consideration is given to the change programme and the impact the changes in management will have. 

The major problem is that this reorganisation and the ensuing chaos as the direction is changed, leaves little of no support for the change programme. This allows the change programme to become optional and subject to the whims  of the masses. Without the strong leadership to ensure that the behaviours of the organisation are changed then the change programme quickly turns to inactivity.

This becomes  problematic when the leadership then allow delivery to take place in the same old ways that it always has, as it undermines the change programme. People start to view the change as secondary to delivery rather than as part of enabling better delivery.  In essence there is no compulsion to make the change from the leadership.  This can have an immediate and detrimental affect on the engagement of staff . Nothing junior staff or consultants can do during this time will be as effective as the senior management requiring that products are delivered in the new way of working. Which, surprise surprise is not top of their agenda while jockeying for position.

 

July 2, 2010

Pricing In Risk – Or a lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing …

Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI, Uncategorized
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There were some amusing off the record conversations a few years ago where it was suggested that a certain household name telecoms company might have clinched a huge multi-year high profile UK government programme when at the eleventh hour a senior exec made a unilateral decision to “just drop a billion” off the bid price.  Now I’m certain this call was not as unconsidered as I have portrayed it, but it all came flooding back to me when I was talking with a prospective customer the other day.   The individual in question confessed that he used to work for a UK division of one of the major US mil-aero operations and whilst there his organisation was one of the last bidders for this same major contract – running its bid according to CMMI best practice, pricing in risk, working with realistic worked estimates etc.  Surprise surprise they did not win the business!

This disguised anecdote backs up a common anomaly found when selling highly bespoke products – namely pricing in all the risk (even as contingency) and building in realistic estimates is often a bad plan unless the entire customer selection team is as mature as you are.  Only then are they well placed to recognise that perhaps the cheapest bid is not the best bid.

This little anecdote bares some similarity with Paul Morgan’s post of a couple of days ago – how do you work ‘by the book in a sustainable and mature fashion’ when your customer does not know what he does not know.  Sometimes its just wisest to give the customer maximum credit for his self perceived maturity and then deal with the inevitable fall out when it happens!

As Paul also said – I’d be interested in your opinions?

 

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