CMMI Survival Guide Just Enough Process Improvement

by Garcia, Suzanne; Turner, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780321422774
• ISBN10: 0321422775
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-20
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Summary

Praise for CMMI Survival Guide"Traveling down the CMMI road can be difficult and time-consuming. Garcia and Turner have given us a practical roadmap that addresses the key points to learn as well as the many potholes to avoid. TheirSurvival Guideis a most valuable resource for the journey. It will help immeasurably in achieving the process improvement that you seek."Dr. Howard Eisner, Distinguished Research Professor, George Washington University"Helps you get to the 'red meat'of the CMMI quickly and with minimum pain."Donald J. Reifer, President, Reifer Consultants, Inc."The best words I can offer potential readers is that you must have this book, not on your shelf, but with you for repeated reading to glean new ideas or reinforce old ones you gained from the past readings. If you have ever been directly involved in a process improvement initiative or if you are starting one, this book can only help you to do a better job. And while [the authors] may not have written this book explicitly for experienced consultants, I found it a great reference even for those of us who helped start this industry, because it provides clear and useful answers to those tough questions we are asked all of the time."Tim Kasse, CEO and Principal Consultant, Kasse Initiatives LLC"This book contains practical (working) tips for the 'getting started'phase of process improvement, which is the hardest one in the road to improving one's processes."Agapi Svolou, Principal of Alexanna, LLC, and SEI CMMI Transition Partner"The authors have done an outstanding job in providing guidance for process improvement from a practical perspective. Instead of focusing on a single technique or approach, they have provided a variety of methods for process improvement implementation and have framed their discussion with rich context from lessons learned. The concepts described in this book will be useful to both those starting CMMI implementations and to those who are well into their journey but are still looking for ways to lessen the pain and provide value-added improvements. Reading the book is like being in the audience during a live presentation by SuZ and Richthey wrote the book as they would present the information to a live audience."Bill Craig, Director, Software Engineering Directorate, AMRDEC, RDECOM"I have been involved in process improvement since the early 90's and many of the mistakes that I made could have been prevented if this book had been available then." Claude Y. Laporte, Professor, ETS Universite du Quebec"Primarily, the book is practical. The guidance presented is geared toward someone who is not exactly sure why they need process improvement, but is presented with the fact that they must do it. Very often these are smaller organizations, with limited resources, and uncertain support from above. As I read the book, I thought almost immediately of a couple of organizations with which I am familiar who could use this kind of tutelage. There are real, and useful, techniques in this book that I believe can help these kinds of organizations prioritize and establish reasonable plans for improving the processes in the organization. I also like the sidebars and personal observations. Discussions of experience can really help organizations through the various pitfalls that are part of developing and deploying processes. It makes the book more of a 'real life'guide, and not a theoretical exercise. Finally, the book is an enjoyable read. The conversational style of the book (and the humor) make it much easier to read than many of the books I have read in the past."Alexander Stall, Principal Process Improvement Engineer, Systems and Software ConsortiumThe CMMI provides a framework for p

Author Biography

Suzanne (SuZ) Garcia is a senior member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University

Table of Contents

List of Figures	xiii
List of Tables	xv
Foreword	xvii
Preface	xix
Acknowledgments	xxiii
Part I. Scouting the Territory	1	(42)
Why We Think Process Is Important	3	(6)
A short history of process improvement	3	(2)
The role of processes in business	5	(4)
Why Process Improvement Helps	9	(20)
Process improvement is about learning	10	(1)
Process improvement should be driven by business value	11	(1)
Process improvement can be valuable for organizations of all sizes	12	(1)
You have choices in your improvement approach	13	(7)
You have choices in the reference model	20	(9)
Why Process Improvement Isn't Trivial	29	(14)
Building and sustaining sponsorship	30	(1)
Managing an appraisal life cycle	30	(1)
Developing and sustaining process improvement infrastructure	31	(1)
Deploying new and improved processes	32	(2)
Developing and measuring realistic goals	34	(1)
Advantages and disadvantages of different-size improvement efforts	35	(3)
Project management issues	38	(1)
Common pitfalls for PI initiatives	39	(1)
Summary of Part I	40	(3)
Part II. Mapping the Route	43	(48)
CMMI As Your Guide	45	(20)
Why CMMI?	45	(2)
CMMI primer	47	(6)
Some choices to think about in using CMMI	53	(8)
Using CMMI to guide your improvement	61	(4)
A Decision-based Life Cycle for Improvement	65	(26)
Decide	71	(9)
Try initial (additional) model elements	80	(2)
Analyze	82	(2)
Commit	84	(2)
Reflect	86	(2)
Summary of Part II	88	(3)
Part III. Surviving the Passage	91	(26)
A PI Case Study	93	(10)
Decide (Cycle 1: To do or not to do)	93	(2)
Decide (Cycle 2: What to do, where, and when)	95	(1)
Try (Cycle 2: The first pilot)	96	(1)
Analyze (Cycle 2: The first pilot)	97	(1)
Commit (Cycle 2: The first pilot)	98	(1)
Reflect (Cycle 2: The first pilot)	99	(1)
Decide (Cycle 3: What's next)	100	(3)
Survival and PI	103	(14)
Size up the situation	104	(1)
Undue haste makes waste	105	(1)
Remember where you are	106	(1)
Vanquish fear and panic	107	(2)
Improvise	109	(1)
Value living	110	(1)
Act like the natives	111	(1)
Live by your wits, learn basic skills	112	(1)
Summary of Part III	113	(4)
Part IV. Experiencing the Journey	117	(108)
Developing and Sustaining Sponsorship	119	(12)
Communicating with and sustaining sponsorship of organizational leadership	120	(2)
Seeking sponsors: Applying sales concepts to building and sustaining support	122	(5)
Being a sponsor: Welcome to the ``foreign element''	127	(4)
Setting and Measuring Against Realistic Goals	131	(20)
Setting goals and success criteria aligned with sponsor objectives	132	(5)
Understanding the current state of the organization: Readiness and Fit Analysis for CMMI	137	(7)
How do you tell if you've succeeded?	144	(7)
Managing an Appraisal Life Cycle	151	(10)
To appraise or not to appraise: Is that really the question?	152	(1)
Different appraisal philosophies	153	(3)
Managing the resources needed to plan and conduct appraisal activities	156	(5)
Developing Process Improvement Infrastructure	161	(18)
Developing and sustaining process improvement team members	162	(2)
Developing a team	164	(3)
Establishing improvement infrastructure to support and sustain CMMI implementation	167	(1)
Staffing and organization	167	(3)
Creating and evolving a PAL (Process Asset Library)	170	(5)
Measurement system / repository	175	(4)
Defining Processes	179	(12)
CMMI Business Analysis	180	(1)
Developing useful process guidance	181	(7)
Collecting/incorporating lessons learned from improvement activities	188	(3)
Deploying Improved Processes	191	(26)
Finding/selecting pilots for CMMI implementation	191	(6)
Working with consultants	197	(2)
Deploying practices to the targeted organizational scope	199	(8)
Communication	207	(10)
Looking Ahead	217	(8)
What's next for you?	217	(2)
What's next for PI?	219	(2)
Summary of Part IV	221	(4)
Part V. Outfitting Your Expedition (PI Resources)	225	(48)
Tools and Techniques	227	(46)
An example of setting SMART goals	228	(2)
Performing a CMMI Business Analysis	230	(5)
Performing a Readiness and Fit Analysis	235	(3)
One-Hour Process Description method	238	(7)
Infusion and diffusion measurement	245	(17)
CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) technique + Chaos Cocktail Party	262	(3)
Additional resources	265	(8)
Bibliography	273	(6)
Index	279

Excerpts

Adopting CMMI (or any other process improvement initiative) can seem like navigating a jungle full of unknown dangers, pitfalls, and false paths. No matter where you are in your process improvement journey, there are a lot of reasons why you might need a CMMI survival guide. If you are just starting out, you'll need to survey the territory, consult maps, talk to other explorers, look into hiring guides, and maybe reconsider whether you really need to take that trip after all. If you are already committed, but feel like you're lost or stuck or going around in circles, your outlook may be reduced to simple survival. On the other hand, if you have begun to see past the dangers and into the pos*sibilities, you may want some additional tools and techniques to get the most out of your journey. For all of you, we are pleased to present this compendium of knowledge and experience about the process improvement jungle in the hope that it can make your trip more efficient, valuable, and satisfying. We have three goals for this volume: We'd like to calm the nervous, help the little guy, and make process improvement more agile. Let's look at each of these. Calming the nervous We've heard lots of nervous concerns about CMMI. It's as though Dante's "Abandon all hope ye who enter here" somehow were added to the CMMI shingle. Consider (if you will) the following common perceptions about CMMI: CMMI is big and intimidating. Who wants to wade through a 700-page-plus book to try to understand it? Our choose one: customer/acquiring company/prime told us we have to use it. We thought we were immune to process improvement because we don't build software. Now they tell us CMMI applies to us. It costs so much to implement. We don't have that kind of overhead funding available. It seems to take such a long time before return on investment is achieved. It was written by and for large, government-driven businesses. It can't possibly be usefulor usablefor small companies and organizations or limited projects. We want to be agile, and CMMI is ueber-high ceremony. We'll wait until it's absolutely, positively unavoidableand then we'll bite the bullet and buy our way in. Fortunately, most of this anxiety is based on misperceptions rising from a somewhat old-fashioned, traditional role for process improvement. While we can't counter every fear, we can provide suggestions for ways to mitigate many of the scary risks. Helping the little guy We believe that small businesses and organizations are particularly underserved by current resources. Our experience tells us that process improvement, when approached sensibly, can benefit many smaller organizations. For that reason, we've included examples from smaller environments. Our approach to incremental process improvement, driven by specific business value rather than simply seeking a maturity level, is especially appropriate for resource-strapped smaller organizations. If your business fits into this category, we hope the book will help you find the confidence to actively adopt new methods that have worked so well in other, larger places. Making process improvement more agile One response to traditionally process-heavy approaches, at least in the software industry, has been the agile methods movement. Methods such as Extreme Programming and Scrum have gained attention as approaches that are designed for easier implementation. Some argue that methods like these are incompatible with models like CMMI; others have found ways to use elements of both in complementary ways. In this book, we'll take a somewhat different approach and describe ways in which process improvement itself can take advantage of the agile philosophy and practices. We describe a more lightweight, focused, and time-constra