Real Process Improvement Using the CMMI

Michael West

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135506605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Operations

Real Process Improvement Using the CMMI (R) presents readers with non-academic, real-world approaches to process improvement via CMMI. The author provides concepts and techniques for CMMI-based process improvement which are as effective as they are innovative. Professionals at all levels from system engineers to CEOs will find a wealth of practical guidance and new ways to look at model-based process improvement that have already benefited large and small organizations in a variety of environments. Using plain language and enlightening illustrations, the author identifies the most critical concepts of the CMMI, and explains how to turn those concepts into real process improvement. This book provides you with key information that will significantly benefit all CMMI process improvement efforts. Topics include: * Ways to discover and understand the business goals and drivers for successful process improvement initiatives * How to recognize the structures and practices many organizations already have in place that can accelerate process improvement, even before they begin using the CMMI * Planning and managing the process improvement project * Innovative, untraditional yet highly effective and proven strategies for CMMI-based process improvement * A thorough debunking of many of the costly and wasteful myths surrounding CMMI-based improvement.

1
NEWS FLASH! THERE IS A LEVEL 1!

The map is not the territory.

— Alfred Korzbyski

QUIZ: WHAT DO YOU THINK? WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?

Take a minute and answer the questions to the quiz in Figure 1.1. Then, once you’ve finished reading this chapter, take the quiz in Figure 1.7 — “What Did You Learn? What Will You Do” — to find out how much this information has helped you with your own CMMI-based process improvement.

As you read this chapter, you’ll discover that definitive answers to questions about CMMI-based process improvement can be evasive. When asked questions, seasoned instructors at SEI have learned to answer with “it depends” or “you decide” and they are wise to do so. When it comes to cultural or technological change, which encompasses process improvement, the “right” answer is the one that most benefits your organization and its business needs.

THE MODEL AND THE REALITY

The Staged Representation of CMMI identifies five levels of capability maturity and defines process areas (PAs) for Maturity Levels 2 through 5. Why are there no PAs in Level 1? And if there are no PAs in Level 1, why is it called Level 1 and not Level 0 (zero), and why doesn’t the maturity scale go from zero to four instead of one to five? And can an organization really make the quantum leap from mastering no practices or process areas to many?

1. An organization that has not been appraised at a CMMI maturity level:
   1. Is in total chaos
   2. Has no processes
   3. Cannot deliver on schedule and within budget
   4. Has happier employees
   5. Not necessarily any of the above
2. True or False:The best way to implement process discipline is to write new procedures and make people use them.
3. Process improvement includes which of the following:
   1. Managing requirements
   2. Making meetings more efficient
   3. Planning and managing projects
   4. Improving communication
   5. Some of the above
   6. All of the above
4. True or False: Your organization has to approach the CMMI differently because your organization is different from others.
5. The best goal for CMMI-based process improvement is________________________ .

Figure 1.1 Chapter 1: What Do You Think? What Do You Believe?

If you read nothing else in this entire book, please read the section in this chapter titled, “Slash-and-Burn versus the Natural Approach to Process Improvement,” for it encapsulates the core ideology of this book in a few short paragraphs.

As an executive or senior manager of a software or systems organization undergoing CMMI-based process improvement, you need to be aware of and supportive of the fact that people in your organization have already developed good engineering and management practices. Do not automatically assume that people need to change what they’re already doing. Encourage your process focus people (SEPG, EPG, or whatever they call themselves) to find ways to leverage the existing best practices and procedures in introducing CMMI-based process improvements.

An effective way to determine your organization’s current process capability or organizational maturity is to conduct some type of process appraisal such as a Standard Capability Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPISM).³ However, the type (and relative cost) of appraisal you conduct to figure out your organization’s starting point for process improvement should be based on business decisions and an understanding of the organization’s recent history. Don’t let this important decision be based on what some consultant wants to sell you. For more information on appraisals and figuring out the starting point, read the section, “Determining the Starting Point for CMMI,” in Chapter 2 — Managing the Process Improvement Project.

Finally, since the success of your organization’s CMMI effort is critically dependent on your leadership, you should read Chapter 7 — Effective Change Leadership for Process Improvement.

Very soon after you hear that your organization is going to do some process improvement or CMM or CMMI stuff, the people responsible for process in your organization may come around asking people like you questions about how you do your work. What they’re trying to do is find out what the organization is doing well and what can be improved in terms of software development and management processes. (If no one comes around asking such questions, find out why not.)

It is very much to your benefit to be cooperative and help the process people gather this information and here’s why: If the process people (i.e., the SEPG) cannot find out what procedures people are currently using to do their work, they might go off and invent procedures which you won’t like but will have to follow. If you speak up and let them know what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and that things are working just fine thank you, then the process people will use your existing procedures (the ones that you’re used to and like) as the starting point. They may make some incremental changes to these procedures down the road, but your contributions to the start-up of the process improvement initiative will probably keep management from thinking that a radical change needs to occur.

The reality of life in modern business is that organizations don’t really leap from zero to six or more PAs in a single bound and there really are process areas in a Level 1 mature organization. They are not defined in the CMMI, but they can be found in the larger universe of process improvement.

This situation — the concept of a Level 1 organization existing with Level 1 being undefined — always reminds me of the 1984 Rob Reiner film, This Is Spinal Tap.⁴ There’s a scene in the film in which the characters Marty and Nigel are looking at Nigel’s guitar collection. They get around to talking about Nigel’s favorite amplifier and the dialog goes like this:

NIGEL:	This is a top to a, you know, what we use on stage, but it’s very … very special because if you can see …
MARTY:	Yeah …
NIGEL:	… the numbers all go to eleven. Look … right across the board.
MARTY:	Ahh … oh, I see….
NIGEL:	Eleven … eleven … eleven….
MARTY:	… and most of these amps go up to ten….
NIGEL:	Exactly.
MARTY:	Does that mean it’s … louder? Is it any louder?
NIGEL:	Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most … most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here … all the way up … all the way up….
MARTY:	Yeah….
NIGEL:	… all the way up. You’re on ten on your guitar … where can you go from there? Where?
MARTY:	I don’t know….
NIGEL:	Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is if we need that extra … push over the cliff … you know what we do?
MARTY:	Put it up to eleven.
NIGEL:	Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
MARTY:	Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top … number … and make that a little louder?
NIGEL:	… these go to eleven.

This wacky little scene mirrors the strangeness of the CMM and CMMI maturity levels. Why not make it four levels — one to four — and have process areas and practices defined for Level 1 and not have a Level 5? The only answer I’ve ever been able to deduce is “this one goes to five.”

In reality, there is a Level 1; it’s just not defined in CMM or CMMI. Business organizations can be observed to share common characteristics which may not be directly related to CMMI. Furthermore, not all organizations that have not been appraised at some defined maturity level are in the same state. Organizations which have not been appraised at a maturity level can vary widely in their respective process capabilities. This chapter takes a look at some of the properties — I’ll call them evolved business practices (EBPs) — which organizations can possess and sometimes have institutionalized long before they ever consider taking on CMMI-based process improvement or being appraised against the model. The information in this chapter also looks at how some of these EBPs can serve as powerful boosters to launching your process improvement effort.

But first, let’s take a look at the biggest mistake organizations make right after they first get the idea to implement process improvements based on CMMI. I call this really commonplace, really bad idea Slash-and-Burn.

SLASH-AND-BURN VERSUS NATURAL PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

With not so fond memories, I often recall my years growing up in Central Florida. It was the late 1970s and early 1980s and the region was undergoing explosive growth. Amusement parks, tourist attractions, hotels, golf courses, and housing developments popped up, it seemed, overnight. Orange groves, pasture land, and woodlands were bulldozed, burned, and paved over at a frightening rate that could never seem to satiate the endless stream of new residents and hoards of greedy developers. To save money, developers would employ slash-and-burn techniques and destroy every living thing on the targeted land. Later, after putting up the buildings or sculpting the golf course, they would plant smaller, younger versions of the exact same trees and shrubs that had previously lived there. Presumably, this replanting was done to give the developed area a “natural” look. Not surprisingly, even after decades of expensive grounds maintenance, the reengineered patches of “wild” Florida never achieved the level of ecological splendor that had been leveled to dirt and ash in a few days.

The Slash-and-Burn Approach

Unfortunately, like the Florida “developers,” slash-and-burn is also an approach often used by well-meaning but misguided people involved in process improvement, and it’s an approach particularly favored among IT outsourcing firms. In slash-and-burn process improvement, process zealots, whether they take the form of new outsourced management, outside consultants, or insiders fresh back from some process class at SEI, march into the organization like an occupying army. They may look at the organization’s process forest, but they see only the tangle of the underbrush and not the naturally evolved beauty and maturity. Without slowing down to get a feel for the existing culture or to take a survey of the existing process landscape to find what good practices may inhabit this landscape, these process people quickly determine that there is no process or discipline, only chaos. Just as quickly, the process crusaders determine that “the primitives need CMMI and they need it now whether they like it or not.” After all, “it’s for their own good and they’ll thank us later.”

To be fair, it’s not always the process shock-troops who make the call to bulldoze the existing culture. More often than not, these heavy-handed approaches are the result of a command-and-control structure up to the highest levels in the organization. The CEO mentions in passing one morning over coffee that perhaps “we could use this CMMI thing to make some improvements” and by the time the message has been amplified downward through the minions of underlings wanting to please the boss, the message has become, “you’d better get to Level 5 by next year or else!”

A slight variation of slash-and-burn SPI occurs sometimes when those of us in the process business simply forget that we exist to improve business and technical processes for the benefit of individuals and organizations. When this happens, “process” becomes the business. We forget that the project managers, engineers, configuration specialists, and senior managers are our clients and that we serve them, not the other way around.

Symptoms of the Slash-and-Burn Approach

The “ethnic cleansing” version of process improvement isn’t always as easy to notice as you might think. If you suspect that the organization you’re in may have experienced or is experiencing slash-and-burn process improvement, look around for these symptoms:

• You ask a process person (such as a SEPG member) who their client is and how they are serving the client and you get a funny, confused look that says, “what are you talking about?”
• You can’t find anyone who can name one goal for the process improvement effort other than the achievement of a maturity level.
• There’s a prevailing belief that no processes existed before the CMMI initiative began. (Partial answer to Quiz Question 1.)
• None of the members of SEPG or your process focus group have any roles or responsibilities other than process or CMM/CMMI implementation.
• No matter how people were doing things before, they’re not allowed to do it that way anymore; they have to follow the new procedures. (Partial answer to Quiz Question 1.)
• No matter what someone is doing, when you ask him or her why they’re doing it, they tell you, “because the process requires it.”
• People with software delivery responsibilities can recite CMMI practices or the identifications and titles of their organization’s policies and procedures.
• Estimates for process overhead in development projects exceed 15 percent of the projects’ total effort.
• The volume of standards and procedures increases, while the quantity and quality of delivered products decreases.
• People use words such as “audit,” “inspection,” and “compliance.”
• People refer to “CMMI requirements” or “SEI requirements.”
• People quietly make jokes about the “process police” or the “process Gestapo.”

Results from the Slash-and-...