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 We also had a few of the CMMI V1.2 books still hanging around, superseded by the new v1.3 material.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.
project management
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.
November 15, 2011
Bridging Project Management to Agile Development
Posted by Sebastian Cazacu under Agile, programme management, project management1 Comment
Many practitioners in the IT sector are now looking to Agile methods as a way to improve their development capabilities and overall business
performance. However, a long lasting debate exists between the so-called traditional Project Managers and the Agile community. Much of this debate is generated by confusion between the purposes of Agile development and Project Management methods.
There is nothing to prevent the use of both Project Management and Agile development for a successful completion of a software or systems development project. However, a distinction between the two is required, in order to understand how to use each of them, as well as to set the
right expectations. (more…)
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…)
March 15, 2011
Apples, Oranges and Non-Sequiters
Posted by David Piper under Agile, CMMI, Process Improvement, programme management, project managementLeave a Comment
Lamri have recently had sight of a spreadsheet form Capers Jones that purports to analyze the total cost of ownership of a standardised application built using different types of “software development methodologies”. It makes for very interesting reading and presents some very surprising results. At first sight, anyway.
February 23, 2011
CMMI and Defence Acquisition – its time.
Posted by Graham Dick under CMMI, CMMI-ACQ, CMMI-DEV, CMMI-SVC, Process Improvement, programme management, project managementLeave a Comment
Ouch – another uncompromising report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee – this time aimed at MOD procurement. I appreciate that of course this is an insanely complex high pressured environment that really does play for big stakes – however given that situation how can not being the best of the best be an option? Maybe now is the time to learn from the US DOD and start to apply CMMI as part of the answer to evolving to a robustly more capable DE&S?
The Public Accounts Committee report in question – “The 23rd Report – The Major Projects Report 2010″ can be downloaded here.
CMMI made Practical 2011, held on the 12th and 13th April 2011 has some 70% of speakers from real end user organisations discussing how they have used CMMI to demonstrably increase their capability.
Find out how the US DOD invests in structured capability improvement with Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute.
October 13, 2010
Inventions, obvious once discovered
Posted by John Evans under CMMI, programme management, project managementLeave a Comment
Inventions are generally obvious once they have been discovered. For Example take the invention of Velcrotm, a material that we all understand and take for granted these days.
The hook-and-loop fastener was invented in 1941 by Swiss engineer, George de Mestral, the idea came to him one day after returning from a hunting trip with his dog in the Alps. He took a close look at the burrs (seeds) of burdock that kept sticking to his clothes and his dog’s fur. He examined them under a microscope, and noted their hundreds of “hooks” that caught on anything with a loop, such as clothing, animal fur, or hair. He saw the possibility of binding two materials reversibly in a simple fashion, if he could figure out how to duplicate the hooks and loops. (more…)
October 11, 2010
The Real World
Posted by Andrew Brettle under Process Improvement, project managementLeave a Comment
I recently attended my first Agile Conference …. the ‘Agile Business Conference 2010′ in London. As usual these events provide a wide range of experiences, from the highly interactive to the ‘Will counting empty chairs keep me awake?’. The Lego Tower building was fun where one of the requirements turned out to be for a helipad to be incorporated. At the end the tower was tested with a little lego helicoptor, replete with rotating blades, landing on the helipad – so thanks to Peter Weare for that. Outstanding presentations were those that related real world first hand experiences. Amongst these were Kelly Waters (IPC) who showed how he transformed his organisation to be Agile and David Piper (Lamri) & ‘Jon’ (GCHQ) presentation showing how they had developed and piloted an Agile profiling framework.
July 27, 2010
Start with the end in mind – bring appraisal preparation forward
Posted by Regis Blandin under CMMI, Process Improvement, project management | Tags: appraisal preparation, CMMI appraisal, CMMI assessment, SCAMPI |1 Comment
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.
