I attended the Agile Business conference for the the n’th year recently and for the first time I really felt that the Agile community is beginning to “get” the need for process and management co-ordination in a way they they have only partially nodded to before. (more…)
Conference
Archived Posts from this Category
October 21, 2011
April 28, 2011
CMMI made Practical 2011 – The Photo’s
Posted by Graham Dick under Agile, Change Management, CMMI, CMMI-ACQ, CMMI-DEV, CMMI-SVC, ConferenceLeave a Comment
We’ve already had a lot of very positive feedback regarding this years conference – comments that ranged from how pleased delegates were at the sheer practicality of the even, how it brought CMMI down to earth and to life with many real life case studies. Other delegates were delighted that speakers addressed the complex change management dimensions involved. For me – I think the awesome conference photos just speak for themselves – have a look at them here on flikr.
April 27, 2011
CMMI made Practical 2011 – look back ..
Posted by Graham Dick under Agile, Change Management, CMMI, CMMI-ACQ, CMMI-DEV, CMMI-SVC, Conference, ISO 20000, ITIL, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
Having just come back after a few days off following this year’s successful CMMI made Practical I thought I would reflect and see what messages seemed to shout out now that a couple of weeks have passed. So impressions …
February 4, 2011
A change of approach?
Posted by Andrew Griffiths under Conference, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
For those of you who don’t know me, I have a positive outlook which is tinged with healthy cynicism. Indeed my cynicism increases exponentially where government IT programmes are concerned but today I had a glimmer of hope! (more…)
November 10, 2010
UK ITSMF Conference 2010 – A view from the stand by Penelope Pig
Posted by Maria Bryan, Lamri under Change Management, CMMI, CMMI-DEV, CMMI-SVC, Conference, ISO 20000, ITIL, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
08:00hrs
Well, we made it safely and I have been positioned on the stand, ready to catch delegate’s eyes. Thank goodness I’m out of that horrid box, it was very crowded.
It’s a real honour and adventure to be here – no-other Lamri Pigs have ever done the ITSMF conference before, and it’s a first for my handler, Maria as well.
I know she’s a bit nervous; I overheard her talking to her colleague Chris. CMMI-SVC is often seen as an alternative or hindrance to ITIL and they’re here to promote its value as a complimentary value-add tool for companies offering Services.
Maria thinks people might be sceptical, or even a bit hostile as to its presence at the conference. I heard her say that for a while she too was unsure as to how it supplemented or complimented existing recognised frameworks like ITIL. Then she supplemented her experience in ITSM and formalised her knowledge of ISO20K by taking her consultants exam in the summer and became a “believer “! (more…)
August 6, 2010
Benefits of CMMI
Posted by Andrew Griffiths under Change Management, CMMI, Conference, Process Improvement[4] Comments
A number of weeks ago I wrote about the potential cumulative benefits of CMMI being 68 billion dollars (link) and today I found myself trawling through an SEI report and a couple of end user presentations (BT and Thales) where benefits are mentioned. The purpose of my trawl was to find some numbers which were believable and the stories around them had a good context. One of my personal favorite organisations for this data in the past has been Accenture, but somehow people don’t relate to information about them.
From the SEI report there is the excellent chart relating to General Motors (see section 4.2.3). “General Motors organizations met their schedules more consistently when they made the transition to CMMI models. The number of project milestones met increased from about 50 percent to about 85 percent. Similarly, they reduced the average number of days late, from more than 50 to fewer than 10. Notice that the major shift in both charts—most noticeable in the second—occurs after they shifted to using CMMI models”
I spoke to my colleague Graham Dick about General Motors and they are, despite the publicised issues facing them, committed to the use of CMMI. Graham was recently exploring benefits information and he spoke to Rich Frost Global Director Systems Development from General Motors he said some interesting things
“We need to be the best customer we can be in the face of massive outsourcing, CMMI-ACQ is our tool of choice to address this need”
“Indeed 80% of projects are on time and there are very very few flagship projects that fail”
BT DFTS invested in CMMI and ran a programme to achieve CMMI ML3 which has it’s investment severely curtailed at the start of the recession (like most improvement initiatives). The last year figures relate to the benefits they achieved within one year of starting this programme, this years figures are what they have achieved given a limited investment.
| Benefit | Last Year | This Year |
| Customer Satisfaction | 33% Improvement | Maintained last years figures |
| Efficiency | 60% more changes delivered | Same number of changes using less staff. Accurate measures now in place. |
| Cost Forecasting | Variance greatly improved | Cost forecasting now tightly managed through sales cycle governance |
| Schedule | Now being measured | Level 1 Schedule shows a great improvement in delivery v’s forecast |
| Reduce NSNP (payments for failed services) | Too early to report | Service Delivery failures have reduced by 30% due to improvements in process (and process adherence) |
Part of Thales UK had some great results too:
2009 Outcomes
- Identified some £1.54M savings/cost avoidance with £950k in year realisable
- CoNQ within the Thales 2011 target (2% of sales)
- On-time: Production was 80% ended at 94%
- On-time: Dev was 75% ended at 82%
- On-time: Services was 88% ended at 96%
Chris Webb, the Improvement Director responsible, makes some excellent points. Not least of which that it is hard to really know where you get the actual benefits from. He sums this up in his presentation by asking did CMMI deliver this? and answering no! The real point is CMMI is a great supporter and facilitator but other things come into play too.
It’s great to see people reporting real benefits which make a difference to their businesses, if anyone has any more good stories please share them here. Also, if you like a bit of limelight could I recommend you contact us about presenting at CMMI made Practical next year.
June 28, 2010
Just arrived in sunny Porto and looking forward to the ESEPG. Me and my team of valiant Lamri pigs are making our way to FEUP. We have got a tough few days ahead meeting the delegates and pressing the flesh. Not to mention the exciting presentations! My human colleague Neil Grover is presenting on a complex multi model issue.
Well time to head off and setup for tomorrow.
El Porco out!
May 20, 2010
CMMI Made Practical 2010
Posted by Regis Blandin under Change Management, CMMI, Conference, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
CMMI Made Practical 2010 was my second year as chairman of the St James room. For those that missed the conference, I should explain that after the key note speeches, delegates can choose to attend presentations in either of two streams.
The St James room tends to focus in depth on more specialist topics while the presentations in the Nash room are more usually broad accounts of organisations’ improvement journeys. This year the presentations in the St James room were very well attended. It was standing room in at least three of my sessions. Does this interest in specialist topics indicate a maturing of the audience at CMMI Made Practical as people come back year after year?
The first presentation in the St James room was led by Graham from the GCHQ. Graham described how his organisation established a “rightweight” portfolio management capability to govern improvement initiatives and ensure that the department got optimal return for its investment (the money was spent on the right initiatives and they deliver as expected).
He told us how his organisation previously set up the improvement initiatives as a formal programme, with greater management overhead and plans for sophisticated benefits management. He was candid that this didn’t really work; not because it was a wrong approach but because it was too much process for the organisation at that point in time.
The portfolio now runs more basic fit for purpose processes that are working. You can read Graham’s rich presentation here.
Through experience and a false start, he clarified what “just enough process” meant for his organisation.
This is a concept I use to help my clients make sustainable process improvements using CMMI.
It is better to build a first process that just about meets the expectations of CMMI and represents a palatable overhead for the organisation.
It can always be improved over time and add real business value from the beginning.
Whereas starting with more sophisticated process solutions is often not sustainable as it goes beyond the amount of change the organisation can absorb at that time. The organisation will then regress before any business value is achieved.
May 14, 2010
CMMI Made Practical 2010 – “cold review”
Posted by Frank Johnstone under Change Management, CMMI, Conference, UncategorizedLeave a Comment
I was speaking with a training professional the other day and she described how her group conducted “hot reviews” immediately after the event followed by a “cold reviews” some time after the event. In terms of the “hot reviews”, this year’s CMMI made practical was an outstanding success, more than two thirds of delegates rated the conference as “excellent”. Now time for a cold review.
My conference highlight was Chris Webb’s (from THALES) keynote speech. Chris fascinated the conference with his contention that “capable and engaged staff, supported by good process can realise a significant latent and additional capability of 20%”. Chris described how he has pragmatically applied lean and CMMI to change this complex, large scale environment. Now I declare a certain personal interest, THALES is one of my current clients and several of my colleagues have had the privilege of working on the business transformation programme that Chris leads.
A very contrasting presentation was made by Steve Haighway and Terry Weatherill from BT DFTS. What delighted most attendees at this presentation was the pragmatism of the story. Steve and Terry described how, in a massively constrained environment, they continued to use CMMI, quietly in the background, often using individual practices to improve how their programme was delivered. Despite losing all external support and many important internal resources they have continued to improve incrementally. It’s over a year since I worked with BT DFTS; again Steve and Terry are former clients of mine.
One of the most reliable predictors of success in modern organisations is learning agility, basically the ability to apply the experience from situation x again in situation y, which may look quite different. As a consultant most of my colleagues relish the “right” clients. These are not usually the easiest clients to work with, but the ones from whom one learns the most – the clients that drive up our learning agility. The THALES and BT DFTS presentations were my conference highlights, not just because they were interesting stories, but because they distilled innovative business improvement experiences that improved my learning agility.
More than ever this year, the conference was dominated by practical and very honest discourse.
May 11, 2010
Thoughts as a result of CMMI Made Practical Conference
Posted by Keith Bray under CMMI, Conference, Process Improvement | Tags: CMMI Benefits;CMMI;CMMI Made Practical |Leave a Comment
After our conference this year and as a result of listening to a number of presentations by the SEI, Norwegian Armed Services and BT, I connected back to an article that I read about the state of the NHS. The National Statistics office report shows that since 1995 till 2006 productivity in the NHS has decreased to 89.8% in comparison to 1995 and in 2006 the government spent £89.7 billion annually. Predicting spending this coming year is £105.8 billion at no increase in productivity, but a continual decline.
A recent report by The King’s Fund and researchers from the Institute of Fiscal Studies estimated that demographic pressures alone are likely to cost the NHS an additional £1.1–£1.4 billion a year at 2010/11 prices, requiring average funding increases in real terms of around 1.1 per cent a year in order to meet demand.
In our recent webinar we stated that the lowest productivity improvement by using CMMI SVC could be 11% annually! This improvement in service would result in releasing funds back into the NHS to employ staff more effectively and also to provide investment in new diagnostic equipment. Perhaps CMMI is for them too?
