Like many businesses we have shrunk a bit over the last couple of years. As a result we’ve accumulated a bit of ‘tech’ – old laptops, broken laptops etc that we wanted rid of. We also had a few of the CMMI V1.2 books still hanging around, superseded by the new v1.3 material. So what did we do – answer we did what everyone does and slung them onto eBay.
Process Improvement
Archived Posts from this Category
March 30, 2012
eBay, tech and irony
Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI, Process Improvement, Change Management, programme management, project management, Agile1 Comment
March 2, 2012
Process improvement in an economic downturn – who ever heard of that?
Posted by Graham Dick under Change Management, Process Improvement, programme management, project management, TrainingLeave a Comment
Process improvement in an economic downturn – don’t be so silly I hear you say!
Well a number of the larger SI’s don’t think its so silly.
January 23, 2012
CMMI and Small Organisations – The Wiki Challenge
Posted by Andrew Brettle under Change Management, CMMI, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
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.
December 14, 2011
One Size Gives Rigor Mortis
Posted by David Piper under Agile, CMMI, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
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 2, 2011
Unlocking Potential – People CMM
Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
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[2] Comments
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
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 4, 2011
Agile and CMMI – Surely Not?
Posted by Graham Dick under Agile, CMMI, CMMI-DEV, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
I was chatting with a customer the other day who has a relatively small development environment and has achieved some really demonstrative benefits using CMMI to drive his process improvement programme. He has successfully illustrated how CMMI works in a small setting. The quite exciting point is that unlike so many process improvement projects that just “die a death” this one is moving on and evolving.
May 24, 2011
Why IT needs to do better……
Posted by Andrew Griffiths under Change Management, CMMI, Process ImprovementLeave a Comment
Onefte.com sums it up again….. This cartoon illustrates why we (as an industry) really need to do better.
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 …
