Tuesday, January 8, 2013

What do YOU think about the CMMI?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser – wouldn’t it be great if we knew what people really think about the CMMI? ~ fellow Lead Appraiser at an SEPG NA conference

Hey, CMMI Users,

Last year, we gratefully acknowledged a milestone here at Ask the CMMI Appraiser when we welcomed our 100,000th visitor. If you were one of them, you know how passionate this CMMI Appraiser is about interacting with users of the CMMI like you. We receive a lot of questions, and always do our best to give a comprehensive response.


But did you know that we also ask a lot of questions? For example, in 2012, my company, Broadsword,  commissioned a study to ask CMMI Users what they really thought about the Capability Maturity Model Integration as one of the tools they were using to make themselves better.

We reached out to over 50 companies in industries such as aerospace, defense, finance, transportation, energy, and manufacturing. We spoke with CEOs, VPs, Directors, and Quality Assurance Managers from a wide variety of companies, large and small, who had adopted CMMI-DEV.

The purpose of the study was to understand their perception of the CMMI. Our report includes over 40 quotes from CMMI Users who made poignant observations, such as the following:

“Getting to CMMI Level 3 was extremely difficult because we were not ready to go to Level 3. What we were doing was the equivalent of trying to convince a salmon not to swim upstream. But, to our credit, when the client’s need for us to have the rating went away, our commitment to using the model did not go away.” ~ CMMI User

The report, “CMMI User Stories: A Study of Perception in the Market,” is now on Amazon as an eBook  – and for a limited time, you can download a FREE copy at http://www.broadswordsolutions.com/resources.

Well, we had so much fun, we’re doing it again! Only, this time, we’d like to give YOU a chance to share your opinion of the CMMI. In the coming weeks, you will be provided an opportunity to participate in an anonymous survey of CMMI Users.

Our hope in sharing the CMMI User Stories is that, whatever your role with the CMMI, your performance will improve through its adoption, as we all strive for continuous improvement.

So keep asking questions. Keep improving. And we’ll keep sharing valuable information about organizational performance improvement and engineering strategy, using the CMMI as one of the tools that can help put your company on the path to greatness.

Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about engineering strategy, performance innovation , software process improvement and running a successful CMMI program.

For more eBooks on CMMI, visit Jeff’s Author Page on Amazon.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Yet another extremely useful and relevant post by you, Jeff! Waiting for the forum where we can all convey individual experiences on using the CMMI model. But - without Ask The CMMI Appraiser, things would have been tough for a practitioner like me. Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

Thank you! It's great to have you here - thanks for reading my CMMI blog! We'll be getting our survey out next week - hopefully you'll be able to participate and give us your valuable insight in to the use of CMMI in your CMMI Level 2 or CMMI Level 3 Software Process Improvement program!