I have some questions about Requirement Development with the CMMI....

    Can we merge specific practices of REQM and RD in one process guide or it is required to clearly defined each process area separately?

·         Related to SP 1.1 of RD

o   What is the entry/input for SP 1.1 of RD?

o   what exact task has to be performed for this SP?

o   Is this SP conducted  once project is awarded or part of Proposal submission?  

·         What is the best practice, to define Customer Requirements and Product requirement in single document and get a sign off from customer as whole or first get customer commitment on Customer Requirements and  then proceed to Product requirement and its sign-off?

·         We don’t have any specific practice right now, so what is the best practice to go for?

All good questions.

Can we merge specific practices of REQM and RD in one process guide or it is required to clearly defined each process area separately?

• of course.  The most important thing is that it reflects how you actually do business and provides a baseline process so you can improve it over time.

What is the entry/input for SP 1.1 of RD?

• The entry point could be many things.  A Request for Proposal, a Statement of Work, an initial set of requirements, and "needs meeting" between principles.  It depends, again, on how you do business

What exact task has to be performed for this SP?

• Hard to say because I don't have insight into your business, but the prior answer should help you out.  Whatever it takes to accept, review, and understand those things.

 Is this SP conducted  once project is awarded or part of Proposal submission?  

• Again, it depends.  But it often happens early in the project, or even during the RFP phase.  If you're an agile/scrum shop it could happen early in each sprint and release.

What is the best practice, to define Customer Requirements and Product requirement in single document and get a sign off from customer as whole or first get customer commitment on Customer Requirements and  then proceed to Product requirement and its sign-off?

• I prefer to see to two stages.  A work product that defines what the customer asked for ("their needs") and approved, and another one that says "this is what we plan to build" that also gets approved.

  We don’t have any specific practice right now, so what is the best practice to go for?

If you're asking what "methods" you should use for this, there is no single method that solves this for you.  These practices are very specific to your business, and you should be asking yourself "what is working today?" and start there.  Then you can use the CMMI model to improve it.  You might look into various methods to help you, like Scrum, Planning Poker, Wide-Band Delphi, JAD workshops, mind-mapping, or AgileCMMI as tools to help you.

Good luck!


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