Will getting a CMMI level CRUSH extra small companies?

Hey CMMI Appraiser – We are seeing a lot of government contracts going to other small agile shops that have somehow managed to get a CMMI rating. We’d like to compete, but are concerned the effort and cost of getting a CMMI level would crush us. How much does it cost to adopt CMMI? ~ Chris O’R

To read the rest of this post, please visit www.cmmixs.com

Spoiler Alert: Adopting the CMMI is supposed to be fun!

Hey CMMI Appraiser, our boss told us to get started with CMMI without letting us know why. I don’t like what I see so far: heavy processes, excessive documentation, compliance, CMMI certification and rules, rules, rules. Why do companies choose to adopt the CMMI? ~ Ruth A.

Hey Ruth,

The CMMI is none of those things. It is intended as a tool to help you make your job environment much better. It’s not supposed to be about filling out a lot of forms, documenting everything and forcing everyone to all behave in exactly the same way, completely without creativity. I don't blame you for being suspicious.  Those who work in large Waterfall-based organizations have seen that movie before. But guess what?

CMMI is supposed to be fun (or at least it should be)!

True, it’s no fun when the boss tells you what to do without saying why. Next thing you know, you’re doing research on engineering performance improvement methods and tools, which puts you at the mercy of so-called CMMI experts, who may soon have you convinced that the CMMI is all about soul-crushing compliance or certification.

But that’s not what the CMMI is all about. Instead, think about CMMI as a tool that helps you ask questions and learn about the way you work, so that you can get better. Consider:

• CMMI can help make your estimates better
• CMMI can help improve predictability and reduce late projects
• CMMI can give your boss more information to help him understand what is going on with projects so he stops micromanaging you
• CMMI can help avoid tedious rework by making sure the requirements are right when you get them, bringing clarity and validation to the process
• CMMI can help put a framework in place that helps you manage client’s expectations, which leads to happier clients
• CMMI can help you bring stability to reduce chaos in your business

… and here's a bullet point that should REALLY get your boss’ attention: 

• CMMI can help you define and scale the Way you do business, companywide.

For the truth about CMMI, Ruth, you and your boss are invited to check out our upcoming FREE webinar:

September 25, 2014 – CMMI: Everything You Need to Know!

This high level Webinar is intended for people who are just getting started with CMMI and aren’t sure how to proceed. The two-hour webinar is not a substitute for an Introduction to CMMI training class, which is a 3-day intensive. And it’s not a substitute for other types of learning. But it is a good way for you to get exposure to the truth about CMMI – so don’t miss it!

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.

CMMI vs. Scrum? NO! CMMI + Scrum!

"In this article, Jeff Dalton walks us through a fairly thorough application of CMMI in Scrum settings. He further demonstrates an approach to CMMI that is not only compatible with Scrum, but also uses Scrum and agile thinking to facilitate CMMI! It's not merely a matter of such-and-so Scrum practices demonstrating this-or-that CMMI practice -- that would be both easy and disingenuous. Dalton practices what he preaches and would never lead a company down a path that only solves their performance needs once, leaving them with nothing with which to fend for themselves when circumstances change. Instead, he offers us a delightfully simple and robust architecture that we can use to build processes incrementally and iteratively. How agile!" Hillel Glazer.

Download your copy of this article now, compliments of Cutter Consortium!

http://www.cutter.com/offers/agiledalton.html

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.

How granular does our CMMI process documentation need to be?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser! Settle a bet for us. How granular does our CMMI process documentation need to be? ~ Francis and  Karl

Hey, Francis and Karl! CMMI is a set of best practices. It doesn’t say you NEED to do anything. It asks you to describe how you want people to behave in a way that will make your company great. That can’t be done with documents, forms and so-called “CMMI Certification,” so whichever one of you was betting that the CMMI does NOT require an immense amount of granular detail, you win the bet.

Unfortunately, we see a lot of losers at the wheel of organizational performance improvement. They put all their chips on getting a so-called “CMMI certificate” and hope to win a CMMI Maturity Level 2 or 3. They up the ante with all tons of detailed documentation of definitions of processes.

That’s not how the game is won. You don’t come out ahead by slavishly trying to control your people with mind-numbing, soul-crushing busy-work, such as filling out documents and forms. You’ll miss the whole point of why you’re doing this. Your goal should be to get value from your process – not just to “pass” an appraisal. If you just go for the plaque on the wall, your CMMI adoption will be a disaster.

I think you get my point. You don’t need tons of documents. Why create all that burdensome, expensive process debt? Go to the level of detail that is valuable to you - and no further! As I always tell my clients, engineers are smart people. They don’t need a step-by-step process, they need guidance. And as my clients always point out, engineers will always try to create one anyway!

True. But you don’t need that. All you need is a little guidance.

My advice is that you approach CMMI for what it really is – a toolset to solve strategic problems. You can use CMMI for guidance on caring about the right things to make your organization great. Along the way, you will create a set of documentation that describes how you want people to behave in your company, and it won’t be too granular.

That’s a safe bet.

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.

SPaMCast Question #7: What one big thing can we do to become a great company?

[NOTE: Over the past few weeks, this CMMI Appraiser has been sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast about whether agile is resilient – i.e., whether it will be able to spring back into shape after being bound or compressed by the pressures of development and support – and how frameworks like the CMMI can be used to make agile more resilient. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 296.]

Jeff, give us the key to being a great company. Tell us what this one big thing is and we’ll do it. Is this one big thing CMMI? Is this one big thing agile? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast 

Tom, when people ask me what one BIG thing they need to do to become a great company, my response is always the same: It’s not about big things. It's about LITTLE things.

For example, in my travels, when I meet CEOs, VPs, Directors, and Quality Assurance Managers from a wide variety of companies, large and small, I ask, “What would it be like if everybody on our team knew exactly what was expected of them?”

This is one of those little things that cause people to shake their heads and say, “What do you mean by that?”

And I say, well, think about what would happen if you walked through the company and you literally ask ten developers, “How long are your sprints? How many sprints in a release? When do you do your retrospectives?” If you just ask those simple questions, you'll get ten different answers. This happens everywhere because it is a very typical kind of behavior. And it is an example of the kind of behavior that can be improved with one single practice in the CMMI.

But the goal is not necessarily to adopt CMMI or embrace agile.  The goal is to consolidate the mental model of the members of your team so that everybody is on the same page. It's a little thing, but if we can do that, we can enhance productivity dramatically, without a lot of overhead.

In the context of agile, the CMMI helps you strengthen your way of doing what you do, by helping you build a resilient framework. By embracing lessons of CMMI with agile – or Waterfall, Spiral, or whatever your methodology of choice is – and building a resilient framework, you move closer to being a great company.

Those interested in learning more about using CMMI and agile to be a great company are invited to participate in our upcoming Webinar:

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives” (in conjunction with QUEST 2015)
Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 12-1PM EDT.
Click here to register for the webinar.

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.

SPaMCast Question #6: What does it look like when an organization has improved productivity?

[NOTE: Over the past few weeks, the CMMI Appraiser has been sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast about whether agile is resilient – i.e., whether it will be able to spring back into shape after being bound or compressed by the pressures of development and support – and how frameworks like the CMMI can be used to make agile more resilient. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 296.]

[NOTE II: In today’s post, Tom is following up on a question about the benefits of using agile and CMMI together to achieve higher quality, faster delivery, and predictable, repeatable results.]

Jeff, you say that by focusing on changing behaviors, organizations can be doubling and tripling productivity. How does an organization see that? What is that? Suddenly, more things getting done? More value? Less people? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

Tom, what organizations will see is a great opportunity to take on more work. That’s what everybody wants, because the more productive they are, the more they more value they can provide for their customers, at cost that everybody is comfortable with.

You know, I’ve never been an advocate of cutting costs necessarily. To me, value is what’s most important. Value is what customers want, and will pay for. There is no shortage of value to be delivered, and no shortage of work to be done. If we are going to meet the demand, we need to learn to change behaviors, so that the people we have can deliver more value. This is not the time to cut costs.

So, you ask, how does a company do this? Well, let’s say you were going to take a large, chaotic, unproductive organization, and transform it into a great company. You have a vision for how this will happen – by delivering more value than your competitors. The way you are going to deliver more value is by getting better at what you are ALREADY doing.

Everyone knows, there is no silver bullet for success in this industry. But if it were me in charge of this turnaround, I’d use agile methods within a CMMI framework to put my company on the path to greatness. Just by applying a few simple concepts, I would be able to take on more work and deliver more value with the same amount of resources as the competitor might have.

I’ll be talking more about this concept of using agile and CMMI on upcoming webinars. I would love to have all perspectives join me by registering below:

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives”

Thursday, September 11, 2014 from 1-2PM EDT.

Click here to register for the webinar.

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives” (in conjunction with QUEST 2015)

Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 12-1PM EDT.

Click here to register for the webinar.

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.

Announcing NEW “Agile Resiliency” Webinar, hosted by QUEST

Dear Readers,

Last spring, this CMMI Appraiser was honored to be the keynote speaker at the QUEST 2014 conference in Baltimore. Apparently the presentation generated a lot of discussion and debate, as I’ve been invited back to share more of my thoughts on making sure agile stays agile via a FREE webinar: "Agile Resiliency: How CMMI Will Make Agile Thrive and Survive." Be a part of the discussion by clicking HERE.

Not everyone understands at first why this is so important to them. The fact is, throughout their history, large adopters such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Rockwell Collins, SAIC and Ford have exerted their influence on every methodology and model they've embraced.

For example, as I mentioned in a recent blog post, there was a day when Waterfall was thought to be innovative, helpful and useful.  (Hard to believe, but true!)  What happened is Waterfall methods evolved and changed to meet the information needs of the large adopters. The same will happen to agile – unless we make a concerted effort to strengthen agile and make it resistant to change.

Whenever I voice this concern, I invariably hear from trusting souls who question why large-scale early adopters would concern themselves with changing such an effective way of getting work done as agile. “These organizations have better things to do than change agile,” they complain. I always respond by pointing out that they don't MEAN to change agile.  They are merely doing business the way they’ve always done business, i.e., in a top-heavy, document-focused, command and control manner. They took a similar approach to adopting the CMMI. They took a similar approach to adopting Waterfall. And they’ll do the same to agile.

The truth is that neither Waterfall, the CMMI, nor any particular process model was ever intended to be top-heavy and document-focused. But that’s the way the large early adopters did business. Thus, that’s how the methodologies and models evolved.

And guess what? Large adopters are STILL doing business their old way! As we speak, there are hundreds of companies being influenced by organizations like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler and hundreds of contractors being influenced by the Department of Defense. What do you think will happen as more and more of them start saying, "Let's be agile!"

I’ll tell you what will happen. It’s what always happens. It happens so reliably, we even have a saying for it here in Detroit, “Suppliers don’t change GM. GM changes suppliers.”

As a supplier, you can have all the best intentions and the right way of going about things, but these large new adopters have tremendous weight and momentum behind what they are doing, and you will eventually get changed. Not because they don’t want to be agile, but because they are NOT agile.

This will not be good for those of us who love agile and want to stay agile.

But there is hope.  This webinar shows you how to fight back by applying the concept of “Agile Resiliency,” a proven strategy for scaling agile by strengthening and reinforcing agile values, methods, and techniques. Agile Resiliency is about integrating the architectural strengths of the CMMI with your agile approach to help you make agile resilient enough to resist the pressure to change – and even scale and thrive.

Check out more information about the "Agile Resiliency" webinar HERE.

And register for the "Agile Resiliency" webinar on September 17, noon EDT webinar by clicking HERE.

See you on the webinar!

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.

SPaMCast Question #5: How do we stop the Agile-CMMI mismatch from happening?

[NOTE: Over the past few weeks, the CMMI Appraiser has been sharing snippets from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast about whether agile is resilient – i.e., whether it will be able to spring back into shape after being bound or compressed by the pressures of development and support – and how frameworks like the CMMI can be used to make agile more resilient. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 296.]

[NOTE II: In today’s post, Tom is following up on a question about the perceived type mismatch between agile and process improvement models like CMMI, to which we explained that agile and CMMI are all about the same thing: solving problems.]

Jeff, if agile and CMMI are all about solving problems, how do we stop this mismatch from happening? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast 

Tom, I've become very passionate about this topic over the last five or six years. You're probably familiar with some of the articles and books written about how agile and CMMI can cohesively work together. Several of our agileCMMI publications are available on our web site, which will give people a comprehensive understanding of our view. In a nutshell, there is no conflict between CMMI and agile.  They can -- and do -- peacefully coexist.

Times have changed. Our industry is starting to realize there is no conflict between agile and CMMI. Now, people are starting to say, “You know what? Let's use the CMMI as it was intended to be used, not to get a certification, not as tool to develop processes, which is how in the past so many people use it. No, let’s use CMMI as a tool to make what we're doing already even better.”

And so, the first step is to decide as a company that we want to have these agile values. We want have values of trust and cohesion and all of these things that are driven by the agile manifesto.

Once we have decided this, then we need to implement the solution. And this is exactly where the CMMI becomes so important, because now we've got this really rich and robust tool set. In fact, we’ve got the richest and most robust tool set in the world for this subject. So let’s make the decision to use it to improve and strengthen what we have in place. We can have predictability instead of chaos and all of the wonderful things that CMMI was intended to solve. 

Notice I didn't say, "does solve," because so many companies have taken an inappropriate approach to adopting CMMI. But with a proper adoption of the Model, you can bring robustness to whatever process it is that you decided to implement.

And so I've made a few adjustments with how I talk about getting CMMI and agile to work together. I've changed my language so that I don't often use the word “process” any more when talking to clients. Now I use the word “behavior.”  I'm saying, "Let’s use this CMMI to increase the resilience of the behaviors that we want to see.”

I'll give you an example. Let's say a company would like their team to use Planning Poker (which by the way I think is a great tool).  We’ll use the CMMI to ensure that Planning Poker is giving us the results we want to get, as well as the repeatability of these results. Our focus will be on making sure that everybody's trained and everybody's using it.  That way, we can get maximum value out of CMMI, which means we're changing behaviors and doubling or tripling the productivity of our people.

There's a lot more to share on this topic.  As I said, I've very passionate about it!  For those who would like to know more, we’re presenting the following upcoming webinars on the subject, and would welcome their participation:

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives”

Thursday, September 11, 2014 from 1-2PM EDT.

Click here to register for the webinar.

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives” (in conjunction with QUEST 2015)

Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 12-1PM EDT

Click here to register for the webinar.

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.

Can CMMI work for us even if our goal is to stay small and agile?

Dear CMMI Appraiser – as a 9-person start-up software company, we love our ability to be agile and turn on a dime if need be. But we don’t love seeing big government contracts go to large companies that have a CMMI rating. Can a CMMI rating work for us even if our goal is to stay small and agile? ~ Sam C

To read the rest of this post, please visit www.cmmixs.com

What’s the difference between Verification and Validation, and how do I figure out which project practices support which process area?

[Dear Readers, for the past several months, our good friend Pat O’Toole, CMMI expert and seasoned consultant, has been collaborating with us on a monthly series of CMMI-related posts, "Just the FAQs." Our goal with these posts is to provide answers to the most frequently asked questions about the CMMI, SCAMPI, engineering strategy and software process improvement. This month Pat clarifies some of the misconceptions about Verification and Validation.  Take it away, Pat! ~ the CMMI Appraiser]


[PAT: Note – there are a number of verification/validation misconceptions I am going to address in this article.  In other words, I’m not going to constrain myself to answering the question – but why shouldn’t THAT surprise you!] 

The CMMI addresses this question very explicitly, and yet the question keeps coming up.  In the “Introductory Notes” of BOTH Verification and Validation, the model states: “verification ensures that ‘you built it right;’ whereas validation ensures that ‘you built the right thing.”  All you have to do is follow that advice and you can’t go wrong differentiating between the two.

Yeah, right!  To me, this pithy explanation is “cute,” but operationally useless.  For example, if I’m conducting system testing, am I’m trying to ensure that the developers built it right, or am I’m trying to ensure that they built the right thing.  I THINK it’s both – isn’t it?

Over the years I have developed what I believe is a much more useful heuristic – one that’s 90% “good enough” and certainly much easier to apply.  Consider this alternative explanation…

When performing something that smells like V&V, take a look at who is involved in the activity.  If it’s just our engineers and testers, then it’s probably a verification activity.  The best the technical folks can hope to do is to compare the product they’re building or testing to the requirements everyone agreed to, and look for deviations that need to be addressed.  Verification is ensuring the work products meet the requirements.

On the other hand, if the customer, user, or a customer/user surrogate (e.g., Product Management) is involved in a product evaluation activity, this tilts the scale much more heavily toward validation.  When a customer looks at a system we are building on their behalf, they are much less interested in comparing it to the documented requirements, and much more concerned about whether the product is going to solve their problem, be usable by their people, and run on their already-overloaded computers.  These concerns reflect those of validation – fitness for use and the ability to work in the intended operational environment.

So let’s test this to see if it’s easy to apply and helps us to reach the right conclusions.  If we employed only “Stepford” engineers and testers, we would start each project with perfect requirements that were perfectly understood, build the product accordingly and then perform perfect verification that discovered and remediated all deviations from the requirements.  In such a perfect world there would be nothing left to find in validation!

However in our non-Stepford, imperfect world, I contend that any problems found in validation likely results from one of three conditions:

1. We missed a requirement; (“You didn’t tell us the pinball machine is for a cruise ship!”)
2. We misunderstood a requirement (“You meant NAUTICAL miles?”) and/or
3. Our verification activities failed to catch it (“Oooops!”).

Given this new rule of thumb, which product-related evaluation activities are verification, and which are validation?  See if your answers agree with mine…

1. Unit testing – it’s just us engineers, which would lead us to verification.  However, in the CMMI, all discussions related to unit testing is found in the Technical Solution process area under SP3.1 Implement the Design – so maybe it’s neither.  Ah, but TS SP3.1, subpractice 4, “Perform unit testing of the product component as appropriate,” has a reference to the Verification process area, so our first instinct was right after all!
2. Integration testing – it’s typically just us engineers and testers, so verification.  However, if the user, customer, or their surrogate participate in some or all of these activities, that also brings a validation component to this activity.  (A single activity CAN be both verification and validation.)
3. System testing – same as integration testing.
4. Qualification / customer acceptance testing – because the user, customer, and/or their surrogate are typically involved in such activities, they are primarily validation.
5. Prototyping – it depends.  If it’s a prototype like sample webpages or mocked up reports or modified process flow diagrams that are intended to be shared with the customer/user to make sure that we’re going down the right path to meet their needs, then it’s validation.  If it’s an engineering prototype – one used to decide which of three alternative technical approaches will best meet the stringent performance requirements (for example), then it’s verification.

One additional note about Customer Acceptance Testing … some people mistakenly believe that if their customer performs unassisted acceptance testing then validation is covered.  What these people appear to forget, however, is that the CMMI is intended to enhance your organization’s capability to develop high quality products, not your customers’!  Your customers’ ability (or lack thereof) to perform thorough acceptance testing says nothing about your organization’s capability (or lack thereof) to perform validation.

Another common misconception about validation is that “Validation = Customer Acceptance Testing.” Validation’s ‘Introductory Notes’ points out, “…validation is performed early (concept/exploration phases) and incrementally throughout the product lifecycle.”  The CMMI legal lawyers will object, saying that the “Introductory Notes” are only “informative” model components – reminding us that only the goals are required!  To address the objection, gently guide them to Requirements Development SG3, “Analyze and Validate the Requirements” – objection overruled!

I firmly believe that most organizations perform more validation than they give themselves credit for.  To lift the veil on these hidden validation activities, ask questions about customer/user/Product Management involvement throughout the life cycle.  What kinds of things do you get them involved in, and what does that involvement entail?  Do you show them mocked-up webpages, sample reports, etc. to elicit their opinions? 

And what kinds of changes do you make based their feedback?  Questions like these will reveal that hidden validation activities that most development groups perform.

Keep in mind that the CMMI suggests that blissful ignorance of performing such activities is better than nothing – in fact, it’s called “capability level 1” – but it’s not as good as actually doing such validation activities “on purpose” – which is the purview of capability levels 2 and 3.  The model also suggests that relying on project managers or engineers to “do what they feel is right” demonstrates more of an individual capability than an organizational capability.  The CMMI would suggest explicitly establishing and institutionalizing the system of practices that provides an organizational validation capability.  You’re probably exhibiting many of the behavioral patterns already, but the model is encouraging you to support it in a way that ensures it is performed consistently, consistently performed, and improved over time.

I have saved what I consider the most important point for the very end – and that is that the amorphous dividing line between verification and validation is something that is only of interest to us CMMI model geeks and that such discussions should probably not be conducted in front of the engineers and testers.  Not only do we embarrass ourselves when such bickering occurs in public, but they really don’t care!  What they DO care about is developing products that delight the customer.  They don’t get hung up on whether a particular activity is “verification” or “validation” – if it’s the right thing to do, they do it.  And THAT’s as it should be!

© Copyright 2014: Process Assessment, Consulting & Training and Broadsword Solutions

“Just the FAQs” is written/edited by Pat O’Toole and Jeff Dalton.  Please contact the authors at pact.otoole@att.net and jeff@broadswordsolutions.com to suggest enhancements to their answers, or to provide an alternative response to the question posed.  New questions are also welcomed!

Would achieving a CMMI Maturity Level help or hurt our competitive difference?

Dear CMMI Appraiser – we are an award-winning federal contractor, providing IT services to NASA, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Department of Interior. We pride ourselves on being very different from our competitors, but lately our developers have been asking us to consider adopting CMMI for its structured framework. My concern is this: if we were to adopt the CMMI, wouldn’t it hurt our competitive difference and make us same as everyone else with a Maturity Level 2 or Maturity Level 3? ~ Sam C.

Dear Sam,

Great question. The purpose of the CMMI is to help any executive, engineer and/or business professional who is trying to create an environment in which your organization can manage its uniqueness in a structured way. You don’t have to “go for a level” – in fact, unless you need to, don't! The competitive advantages of adopting the CMMI are far more important the mere designation of ML2 or ML3. With a proper adoption of the CMMI, you’ll leave the competition in the dust.

It’s counterintuitive, but true. Rather than making you seem the same as everyone else, you can use the CMMI for guidance on emphasizing and leveraging your difference. The Model helps you establish an environment for allowing you to easily operate like the great company you know you can be – for the long term.

So I wouldn’t worry too much about what other people think, Sam. It’s not about changing your business to suit them. The CMMI is about the transformation of the culture of your company. It’s about improving and changing the way your company behaves, so that you build better products, win new business and retain the customers you have.

For more information on using the CMMI as a competitive differentiator, we are hosting a Webinar that shows you everything you NEED to know about CMMI. Sign up today for: “CMMI - Everything You Need to Know” on Thursday, September 25, 2014 at 1PM EST.

Don't miss this great learning opportunity! Register today.

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.