Friday, May 31, 2013

Is CMMI cost-prohibitive for companies under 100 FTEs?

Dear CMMI Appraiser – My business partner is interested in adopting the CMMI framework for software process improvement, but, to be honest, do we have any business trying to adopt CMMI? We’re no Northrop Grumman or Lockheed-Martin. We are proud to be a growing firm that’s committed to doing things the right way, but I assume the CMMI is cost-prohibitive for a company under 100 FTEs like us. Am I right? ~ Joseph “Jody” D.

For the answer to this question, please visit www.CMMIxs.com.

Monday, May 27, 2013

How does our CMMI Level 3 compare against the competition?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser,

We’re a CMMI Level 3 IT strategies and software development company in western Ohio. The other night, at an industry awards ceremony, our biggest competitor bragged that he had data that showed how his company’s Maturity Level rating compared against ours. He acted like it was privileged information. Any idea what he was talking about? ~ Ray I.

Ray, it sounds like your competitor was trying to impress you (or himself) by acting mysterious about some pretty straight-forward data. The truth is, anyone curious about comparing their CMMI maturity levels to other companies can reference the following chart:


This data was recently released by the CMMI Institute, and is contained within their March 2013 Maturity Profile Report. The online version is available here.

At a glance, the chart reveals three interesting pieces of information:

  1. The vast majority of companies are at CMMI Maturity Level 2 and Level 3 (“Managed” and “Defined”). 
  2. A smaller amount of companies are at CMMI Maturity Level 4 and 5 (“Quantitatively Managed” and “Optimizing”). 
  3. A fairly significant amount of companies did not get a CMMI Maturity Level rating (“Not Given”). "Not Given" could be the result of a company not caring about what "level" they get, or it could be because they DO care, but just don't make it!

To me, the most interesting aspect of this graph is that – like your company and your competitor’s – so many organizations were at CMMI Maturity Levels 2 and 3. This is a trend that has been gaining momentum over the last few years.  The current Report shows that, out of the last 5500+ appraisals reported in North America, about 25% were CMMI Maturity Level 2, and 63% were CMMI Maturity Level 3.  Remember, this chart is for ALL reporting organizations.  Results vary by country - in fact, the US number is roughly 55% Maturity Level Three and 45% Maturity level Two.

But this is ALL it means. Your company and his are among the 63% of companies that were appraised last year and achieved an ML3 rating.

Mystery solved!

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.

To download eBooks about CMMI, visit Jeff’s Author Page on Amazon.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Register today for San Diego CMMI Training

Dear CMMI Appraiser – I am a Vice President at a leading engineering and technical services company serving the U.S. Defense, Intelligence, Civil and Homeland Security Communities with over 2,000 employees worldwide. After our Northern Virginia team had such a good experience in your introductory class about CMMI last month, we decided to put our Southern California group through the same CMMI training. Do you have an Introduction to CMMI training in Southern California scheduled in the weeks or months ahead? Thank you. ~ John L.

John – I’m glad to hear that last month’s CMMI Training in Northern Virginia was useful to your company. Yes, I will be conducting San Diego CMMI training classes very soon. In fact, we’ll be on location in sunny San Diego at the end of this month. See details below.


Yes, indeed! On May 28-30, 2013, we are joining with Epsilon Systems Solutions to host a 3-day CMMI training class in paradise!

The training course is an ideal experience for any executive, project manager, engineer, software developer, line manager, analyst, tester, or process or quality professional who would benefit from learning how to use the CMMI to make software and engineering performance even better. Registration is open for Introduction to CMMI-DEV v1.3.

Click the links below for more details and to register for San Diego CMMI training classes:

Introduction to CMMI-DEV v1.3

INTRODUCTION TO CMMI TRAINING: SAN DIEGO
May 28-30, 2013, in San Diego, CA, hosted by Epsilon Solutions.
Learn about CMMI, process models, and how to use them to be a great company!
Click here to register for: the Introduction to CMMI training in San Diego

Earn 21 PDU's or 2.5 CEUs!

It’s great that you are planning to send your Southern California team to our San Diego CMMI training class, John. I hope you’ll feel free to invite colleagues from other companies, as well. As you know from your previous experience, this practical, relevant CMMI training class gives engineering and software professionals new insights into addressing persistent problems, and helps them improve upon what they are ALREADY doing. So share the news!

In the meantime, I’ll see your team in paradise!

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.

To download more eBooks about CMMI, visit Jeff’s Author Page on Amazon.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Top 5 CMMI Info Sites

Hey, CMMI Appraiser, we are big fans of your blog, and have noticed that you sometimes post links to other resources on CMMI, like videos and electronic books that we’d love to dig deeper into. Is there one central place to get this information from you? ~ David Z.

David, you made my day! I love that kind of question. We are ALL OVER the social media. And on every media outlet we provide a wealth of FREE information about CMMI, engineering strategy and organizational performance innovation that can help you improve the speed of software delivery, reduce defects, eliminate rework and make your projects more predictable and manageable.

Here are our 5 most popular sites - so take your pick!

#1 CMMI-TV – If you are looking for short, informative video clips about Agile, CMMI and performance innovation, we invite you to subscribe to our CMMI-TV channel.


#2 CMMI eBooks – Like to get your CMMI info on screen? Check out the highly useful and always entertaining eBooks we’ve written about CMMI.


 #3 @CMMIAppraiser on Twitter – Could you use a daily tip on CMMI, engineering performance and software process improvement? Follow us on Twitter.


 #4 Broadsword Client User Group on LinkedIn – Interested in joining a community of like-minded engineering and software professionals for discussion and CMMI info? Join our group on LinkedIn:

#5 www.broadswordsolutions.com – For your all-around information source about CMMI, performance innovation and process improvement planning , join us on the Broadsword website.



You can find us elsewhere online (such as Facebook, Google-Plus andTumblr), offline (such as in the Cutter IT Journal) and in person at seminars, conferences and CMMI Training classes all around the world – but this should give you a good start.

Enjoy!

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.

Friday, May 10, 2013

We got our CMMI Level – NOW what?

Hey CMMI Appraiser – we got our CMMI Level. I’m proud of our Appraisal Team, but now what do we do? ~ Loa P, IT executive 

Hey Loa,

Congratulations! I hope by “getting CMMI Level” you mean you precisely determined the strengths and weaknesses of your engineering or software organization - and you're using that today to make yourself better!  aIf you learned to use CMMI that way – as one of the tools you can use to accelerate performance while making the team more agile, stable, and valuable – then, way to go, team! You should be jumping for joy!


Unfortunately, not everyone feels this way after achieving a CMMI Capability Rating. The adoption of CMMI carries with it many complex emotions. Some software and engineering executives feel strongly that they want organizational performance improvement. Sometimes they covet "CMMI certification" – or both. Sometime, they  don’t know WHAT they have.

One of the things that I try to get my clients’ heads around – whether we’re guiding them through a CMMI appraisal, CMMI consulting or CMMI training – is that a 'process' is simply about how you do work and how you do business.

So you did your process improvement planning and designed your process. But all the while you were gathering evidence during your SCAMPI A, you were actually working toward something of far greater value than achieving your Maturity Level 3. You were validating a new system that will drive your company from process improvement to performance innovation.

And now you want to know what to do next? How about improving performance with the processes that you’ve built? It’s the next frontier. It’s time to operationalize your strategy for continuous improvement. It’s time to operate the infrastructure you’ve developed.

Now, I say this to some pretty smart engineers sometimes, and they have no idea I’m talking about. “What infrastructure?” they’ll say. “I didn’t know we were building an infrastructure. I thought we were just filling out forms!”

Others get it. They understand that CMMI is about much more than filling out forms; it’s about creating a system of systems. It’s about architecture and integration points between processes.

No matter where you are at this point, Loa, I encourage you to look beyond CMMI. Achieving a Maturity Level was merely a tactical objective. Now you are learning to operate like a great company. That’s a strategic initiative of far greater import. It calls for a higher awareness of the architecture (the model we designed) and the infrastructure (the physical instantiation of that model) in which you have invested.

In a nutshell, what you’ve done is build a multi-faceted organizational infrastructure that is at once a process infrastructure and a performance infrastructure. You’ve built this infrastructure in part because you were trying to achieve a CMMI Level – and if you worked with Broadsword, we helped you build it with an agileCMMI approach – but what we really helped you build is an architecture with which to run your business. You can take that and run – far beyond CMMI.

Going beyond CMMI is a passion of ours here at Ask the CMMI Appraiser. I have more to share on this topic. Please check back soon.

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.

To download more eBooks about CMMI, visit Jeff’s Author Page on Amazon.

Monday, May 6, 2013

How to adopt the CMMI without creating more overhead?

Dear CMMI Appraiser, we’re a mid-sized San Diego IT company, trying to grow, and we realized that in order to grow, we had to have standard procedures on how things needed to get done that would be easy to learn, follow and would be successful. We started by defining and adopting our own methodology. One year later, we are interested in graduating to the more rigorous CMMI model, but have some concerns. What is the best way to adopt the CMMI without dramatically increasing overhead? ~ Ned A.

Ned, welcome to the CMMI! It sounds as though your research has led you to conclude (correctly) that the CMMI is a process model that can help you improve upon the way you already do your work. I would expand this to say that the CMMI provides a clear definition of what an organization should do to promote behaviors that lead to improved performance. Those behaviors include eliminating what we call “Process Debt.”



What Is Process Debt?

Process Debt is our name for the unintentional consequence of trying to reach a CMMI Maturity Level without trying to be a great company. It can be an insidious problem for companies that don’t understand the real value of the CMMI. Instead of focusing on learning new behaviors that can transform the culture of their company, they take a documentation-focused approach. The result? Too many forms, meetings, reviews, and sign-offs. Quality audits are heavy-handed and there is much too much oversight. The resulting Process Debt crushes your engineers, damages creativity, and destroys any productivity gains you were hoping for.

How to Avoid Process Debt?

You can avoid Process Debt simply by understanding that the CMMI is about supercharging engineering performance, increasing productivity, reducing risk, and doing what you do, better. It is NOT about certificates, plaques, and ratings. It’s NOT a test you need to pass. And it’s NOT about creating more overhead.

Many newcomers to the CMMI don’t realize this at first. Often, someone has been pumping them full of misinformation. We see some CMMI consultants exhorting their teams to finish the projects and present documents with no real insight into how things are going or how they can be made better.

That’s a mistake. Rushing to create documents and processes to satisfy the CMMI Appraiser just adds to the Process Debt, making it even worse. Instead, you should be working to eliminate crushing Process Debt – and help you learn the behaviors that can put your company on the Path to Greatness.

OK – How Do You Do THAT?

To learn more about CMMI, I encourage you to take advantage of some of our upcoming CMMI training, webinar and eBook experiences:

INTRODUCTION TO CMMI TRAINING: SAN DIEGO
May 28, 2013, in San Diego, CA, hosted by Epsilon Solutions.
Learn about CMMI, process models, and how to use them to be a great company!
Click here to register for: the Introduction to CMMI training in San Diego

CMMI: Everything you need to know! WEBINAR REPLAY
Learn the ins and outs of the CMMI, and how to ask yourself what I call “CMMI questions” as an engineering strategy for addressing common business problems such as late projects, over budget projects, unhappy customers, etc.
Click here to watch the “CMMI: Everything You Need to Know” Webinar Replay

HOW TO SPELL CMMI: eBOOK
How to Spell CMMI is an introduction CMMI for engineering and software professionals looking for ways to improve software delivery, achieve a CMMI “certificate” or rating, develop a strategic weapon that can help attract and retain new customers, or get on the path to becoming a great company. Click here to download How to Spell CMMI

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.

To download more eBooks about CMMI, visit Jeff’s Author Page on Amazon.

Friday, May 3, 2013

OCM? What’s in it for me?

Hey CMMI Appraiser, I’ve seen a few posts here about OCM, and my team is interested in learning more. Can you tell us how would OCM benefit our organization and its process improvement planning effort? We are a CMMI Level 3 organization ~ Jonathan A.

Jonathan, thank you for stopping by.  The discipline you have been reading about here at Ask the CMMI Appraiser, known as Organizational Change Management (OCM), is the specialty of our resident expert, Julie Calfin, Broadsword’s Director of Consulting. Julie does amazing work with companies that are undergoing large scale business transformation like yours. Take it away, Julie! ~ The CMMI Appraiser 

Thank you, CMMI Appraiser!

Jonathan, great question! “What’s in it for me?” is generally the first thing anyone wants to know when they find out about OCM. Depending your role in the organization, I give my answer one of two ways:


1) From the organization’s perspective:

The benefit of OCM is it gives you a way of making your future state a reality. In other words, OCM is a discipline for helping you transform your company into whatever you want it to be.

As a practical matter, the organization benefits by embracing OCM because change is incredibly disruptive to any organization. OCM allows you to manage the change with minimum disruption. That’s the main benefit for the organization.

Is there an ROI? Absolutely! Organizations that embrace OCM make a significant investment in tactics and tools such as communications, training, stakeholder involvement, recognition & rewards, and what they get out of it is the ability to implement all of these changes, without burning out their workforce, without missing all of their project deadlines, and without losing their customers.

2) From the individual’s perspective:

The individual benefits from the adoption of OCM practices as well. After all, the organization is investing in you so that you can have a role in its future state. OCM tactics employed by your organization give you the ability to make the necessary changes without burning yourself out or harming your work product in the process.

Oh, I understand that sometimes they don’t make themselves clear. Tell me if this has ever happened to you. The order comes down from above that a specific change is coming. Unfortunately, the person sponsoring the initiative does not know how to make the change a reality. They know WHAT needs to change (they know, for example, they need processes that are CMMI-based), but don’t know HOW to go about affecting that change.

This is the purpose of OCM. Using OCM, the leaders of your team can create a blueprint for how to make these changes a reality, how to change their culture, and how to sustain that culture change over time.

There are three more ways OCM helps individuals do their jobs better.

Efficiency: Nowadays, more people are asked to do a lot with a little. OCM techniques allow people to implement large scale changes without overtaxing themselves in the process. For example, by involving the right people in the change initiative at the right time, you can avoid delays that are caused by false starts and negative emotions.

Learning: There is a learning component to OCM as well. Each individual has to acquire some new knowledge, skills and abilities – and potentially some new attitudes – in order to make the change a reality. One of the things we do in OCM, for each stakeholder group, is to quantify the learning that is needed and schedule it to be acquired at the right time. The advantage is that the organization is not going to just ask you to change. Instead, they will give you the learning opportunities you need to make these changes.

Influence: Finally, the adoption of OCM practices will equip individuals in the company to positively influence those around them. Change leaders are needed throughout the organization, not just at the top. Individuals become influential by disseminating valuable information, modeling desired behaviors, and eliminating barriers to change. Influential leaders emerge when we provide opportunities for them that are aligned with our future state vision.

I appreciate your question, Jonathan.  Please check back in the weeks ahead as Broadsword Solutions is planning to announce the availability of our first OCM eBook!

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

Julie Calfin is the Director of Consulting at Broadsword Solutions Corporation. She has years of real world experience using OCM strategy and tactics to help her clients achieve their goals. Julie also uses the CMMI, in partnership with her clients, to set-up, monitor, and sustain process improvement programs.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI program.