CMMI

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February 10, 2012

CMMI Made Practical Schedule posted

Posted by margaretbarber under CMMI
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True, we can’t promise any beach volleyball but our presenters have plenty experience in their own shifting sands of Process Improvement.  Visit http://www.cmminews.co.uk/2012/conference.asp to see the agenda and make sure you take advantage of the early bird offer. Book before 24th February and get a 20% discount, taking the price to £478 for the two days.

 

If you’ve attended before you’ll know that the name of the game is candid, pragmatic presentations and 2012 is no different. We have SITA,  BT and Thales among others sharing their war stories on how to reap benefits while in the midst of mounting financial pressures.   Hornbill a small company by CMMI standards are returning to update us on how their CMMI led initiative fared during 2011 when they went for CMMI level 2, and Lockheed Martin on how getting the language right at the beginning can avoid unnecessary conflict, confusion and re-work

 

If you would like to come along please email marketing@lamri.com or call 01748 821824

 

January 23, 2012

CMMI and Small Organisations – The Wiki Challenge

Posted by Andrew Brettle under Change Management, CMMI, Process Improvement
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What tools should a small organisation implementing CMMI equip themselves with? An easy question but a little more difficult to answer directly as the response will be dependent on the availability of skills, experience, infrastructure, budget and above all the processes that the tool will be supporting.

In an earlier blog (How I fell in love with a wiki) I outlined the benefits of using a wiki in a small organisation that acheived CMMI maturity level 2 last year.

Was the wiki instrumental in this? Yes. It was key to quickly and easily capturing and disseminating information about requirements and their status, process descriptions, plans, status reports, measurements, issues, actions and risks. It was a good no-nonsense process asset library.

Was it the only tool that could be used by a small organisation?  No. Other specialist tools were used for configuration management, project scheduling,  automated testing and defect reporting/tracking. These provided functionality that would have been too costly for a small organisation to build into or fully integrate with a wiki. Excel spreadsheets were quickly developed as a low cost effective solution for timesheets, quality assurance checklists, resource planning and measurement data capture and analysis. In larger organisations some or all of this functionality is acquired through off the shelf software packages.

Can the Wiki be improved? Yes. Some of the data on the wiki could make more use of spreadsheets to improve overall productivity and maintenace. For example a small organisation would find it cost effective to maintain requirements traceability and estimation workbooks on well designed spreadsheets rather than trying to maintain these on a wiki.

So the challenge for a small organisation with a wiki is to get the right balance between the benefits of flexibility, ease of use, speed of deployment, appropriate functionality and the overall cost of  maintainance, licences and deployment. Above all ensure it meets your process needs.

 

January 20, 2012

CMMI for Acquisition – The Lost World

Posted by Andrew Brettle under CMMI, CMMI-ACQ
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I recently worked with a client on their implementation of CMMI-ACQ. After much hard work and courage they were rated as a maturity level 2 organisation late last year. Along the way they accumulated many better practices, benefits and a better understanding of how their own organisation needs to work with partners and suppliers. So after this success I was curious to know which other organisations had gone down the CMMI-ACQ path and published their appraisal results. (more…)

 

December 14, 2011

One Size Gives Rigor Mortis

Posted by David Piper under Agile, CMMI, Process Improvement
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CMMI, for all its alleged faults, is smart enough to recognize that one size does NOT fit all.  The truth is even more extreme, organizations tempted into the “one true process” quickly realize that “one size fits no one”. (more…)

 

November 28, 2011

Leading Process Improvement the Vogon Way

Posted by David Piper under CMMI
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(with apologies to the memory of Douglas Adams)

Recently promoted to Awful Prostetnic Vogon, Jeltz watched with dismal satisfaction as the Galactic Improvement Fleet moved into low orbit around the Earth. The cheerful panic-inducing yellow of the destructor fleet had been changed to a dull grey – an improvement in Jeltz’ mind. And the ships still hung satisfyingly in the sky in exactly the way that bricks don’t, which made the situation perfect. The appearance of the terrifyingly familiar ships began to cause panic in the streets below – the population of Earth remembered all too well what happened last time these ships appeared in the atmosphere. (more…)

 

November 7, 2011

Iron Triangles and Illusory Risk Transfer

Posted by David Piper under CMMI
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I really need this new project delivered, but I don’t have the resources to do it.

Well, there’s an obvious solution, why don’t we outsource the development? (more…)

 

November 2, 2011

Unlocking Potential – People CMM

Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI, Process Improvement
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A funny thing happened to me on the way to the office today when a contact expressed significant interest in People CMM.  Why is that funny?  Well People CMM feels a bit like the ugly duckling alongside the SEI’s shiny suite of CMMI v1.3 models.

People CMM was first released back in 1995 amongst the first explosion of CMM’s that followed the SEI’s release of the original Software CMM back in the early 90’s, however in all the excitement of integrating multiple CMM’s into the CMMI, People CMM kind of got left behind.

That it got left behind can be seen from the number of suppliers licensed to deliver services worldwide … only 14 out of some 450 who deliver CMMI services, and of those 14, only 7 actually have staff licensed to deliver People-CMM services.  Another dimension on this is SCAMPI Class A appraisals delivered against People CMM.  Over the last three years there have been just 13 whilst for CMMI over the same period there have been – lets just say many 100’s (see SEI PARS database for the full list).  There is also a high bar to service delivery as certified individuals cost something like 35k USD to develop.  So weak pull from the market combined with weak push from the supply base results in stagnation.

On a related note Chris Webb from Thales gave a thought provoking talk at CMMI made Practical 2010.  His premise was that CMMI was helping them be more predictable and effective via the consistent use of process.  However if one applied the same focus to the ways one nurtured one’s staff then Chris argued that it may well be possible to unlock an additional 20% capacity within the organization.  Which comes around to my discussion above and that maybe there is a commercial demand for help from People CMM after all – its just poorly understood to date.

On this same subject a little bird has told me that the UK, Indian and Chinese governments are starting to express interest in its use … who knows?

 

October 31, 2011

Don’t miss the benefits of CMMI

Posted by Sebastian Cazacu under Change Management, CMMI, CMMI-ACQ, CMMI-DEV, CMMI-SVC, Process Improvement, programme management, project management
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We often emphasize the need to do process improvement on a continuous basis, as an ingrained component in the “business as usual” operations.  However, what about the management of this activity, should it be performed as operations management? (more…)

 

October 24, 2011

CMMI and ISO

Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI, EN9100, ISO9001, Process Improvement
1 Comment 

Maintaining ISO certifications and using CMMI necessitates that you run audits and appraisals to ‘take the process temperature’ of the business. However both these events are somewhat disruptive and involve talking to people across the business. Some of our customers have asked if they can realize savings by combining the events? (more…)

 

October 19, 2011

Unfortunately….

Posted by Andrew Griffiths under CMMI
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Unfortunately life is like this…. However it isn’t just the fault of the change / improvement people – its the fault of the business.  Improvement takes time, effort and resources to do well and to make stick.

Remember this when you are planning it … otherwise you spend money on unrealised benefits. unfortunately these are unnecessary expenditure and will make it harder when you ask for management’s support in the future.

Do it properly…..

 

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