Did you experience an increase in quality and performance?

Welcome back to Ask the CMMI Appraiser for today’s installment of CMMI User Stories!

If you missed the previous posts, we’ve responded to the demand for information in the industry ("What does the market think about the CMMI today?") by sharing our study of what CMMI users really think about the CMMI. The first question was: “Are projects more predictable with the CMMI?”

Today we're highlighting Question #2:

Did you experience an increase in quality or performance?

The great strength of the CMMI is that it provides organizations with guidelines for increasing performance and improving the quality of product and services. With a market that often focuses on achieving a “level,” we sought to understand whether organizations actually achieved improvements in performance and quality.

A healthy eighty-four percent of respondents said they improved in these areas (up from eighty percent in 2012).

Be sure to check back regularly as we share results of the CMMI User Story Report right here on Ask the CMMI Appraiser.

We’ve also made the information available in an eBook. If you would like to receive the complete set of user stories in the final Report, click here to access your free* copy.

*$9.99 on Amazon

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 training classes and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

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

How do we get teams to embrace CMMI and Agile?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser, we are looking at ways to use the CMMI and Agile to make software and engineering performance even better. This will be a big change for us. What’s the best way to get our folks to buy in? ~ Don V.

Hey, Don,

Great question! Most companies don’t realize that the biggest hurdle to success is how you deploy improvements to the community. It's critical to think about what you're going to do to get people to embrace it and actually use it.

In my experience, the place to start is with training. Upgrade yourself to the latest version of CMMI and Agile, while learning about the intersections between Agile and CMMI, so you can understand how to combine the two and get the best results.

Then let them run with it. Buy-in comes from overcoming obstacles together, having success, and developing a team identity. When people apply what they've learned, and help free the organization from burdensome process debt, unhappy customers, overhead, and compliance ... we call that "being a CMMI Badass."

There are many training options in the marketplace offering to help you. But software and engineering executives and professionals regularly tell us there's something different and unique about our CMMI and Agile training classes. Instead of some of the standard exercises, they participate in things like playing Planning Poker, using Fibonacci sequencing for their estimates, doing Agile program planning, conducting performance retrospectives, and practicing many of the hands-on Agile ceremonies and activities.

For some, the experience can be transformative.

So I'd suggest starting where you'll see the biggest immediate impact on performance, Don. Get your team registered for the latest training in CMMI V2.0 and Agile. They’ll come away knowing how to use CMMI and Agile together, freeing your organization to be great as you know you can be.

Join the CMMI Gang!

April 1-3, 2019: CMMI V2.0 Training

April 4-5, 2019: Agile/CMMI Integration Workshop

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 training classes and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

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

Are projects more predictable with the CMMI?

Welcome back to Ask the CMMI Appraiser for today’s installment of CMMI User Stories!

In response to the demand for information in the industry (What does the market think about the CMMI today?) we are sharing our study of what CMMI users really think about the CMMI.

The study consists of surveying over 70 CMMI users and asking them about their experiences with the CMMI, good and bad. Here’s our first question:

Are projects more predictable with the CMMI?

As more organizations around the world pursue the value that frameworks like the CMMI and Scrum are intended to provide – higher quality products, faster delivery, and predictable, repeatable results – it is not always clear that the benefits are being realized. Measuring a quality such as predictability can be an inexact science.

In our survey, eighty-two percent of respondents indicate that projects are more predictable with the CMMI (up from eighty percent in 2012).

Be sure to check back regularly as we share results of the CMMI User Story Report right here on Ask the CMMI Appraiser.

We’ve also made the information available in an eBook. If you would like to receive the complete set of user stories in the final Report, click here to access your free* copy.

*$9.99 on Amazon

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 training classes and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

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

My Book "Great Big Agile" spotted at South-by-Southwest 2019!

Attendees at SXSW2019 got to check out my new book, Great Big Agile this week, courtesy of my great publisher Springer Apress!

What does the market think about the CMMI today?

What does the market think about CMMI?

Yes, that’s still the million dollar question, isn’t it?  Since the last time we did this survey seven years ago, we’ve seen a spin-off to the CMMI Institute, new leadership, new staff members, a fresh marketing approach, and the introduction of the Model upgrade, CMMI V2.0.

Much has changed. But have perceptions changed? To find out, we commissioned the second User Story study. Seventy-seven companies were randomly selected to participate rom the CMMI Institute’s Published Appraisal Results (PARs) All had achieved at least CMMI Maturity Level 2 between 2015 and 2017.

The reason we chose this timeframe was to give the CMMI users some period of time since adoption, allowing for more objectivity.

The survey went out to CEOs, VPs and Quality Assurance Managers of North American companies, large and small. Companies were in the aerospace, defense, finance, transportation, energy and manufacturing industries, and they were all using CMMI-DEV.

We listened to the stories they told about using the CMMI. We captured the data, and analyzed the results.

Like its predecessor, the second edition of the CMMI User Stories Report builds its case on anecdotal data from actual end users. We gathered stories about what’s working and what’s not working with the CMMI, directly from the users themselves.

We will begin posting the results later this week. You are invited to check back regularly as we share results of the CMMI User Story study right here on Ask the CMMI Appraiser.

We’ve also made the information available in an eBook. If you would like to receive the complete set of user stories all at once, simply click to download the free* version of the eBook.

*$9.99 on Amazon.

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 running a successful CMMI program.