Why CMMI Certification Might Drive You Crazy

Dear CMMI Appraiser, we are a supplier of electronics and software to large commercial organizations. Lately customers been giving preference to firms that are CMMI Level 2 or 3. We attempted to get our CMMI certification in 2011, but got too busy and failed our CMMI Appraisal.  To get our CMMI certification in 2012 what do we do - try again?

~ Laurence F.

Laurence, your story reminds me of Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

In my opinion, if you go for CMMI certification again this year, and don't change your approach, nothing you can possibly do will be different, and the only certification you will qualify for is this one:

Why do I say that? Because the CMMI is not about certification.

Now, I’m just kidding you about being certifiably insane. You have simply been misled, as have many others. After all, the phrase “CMMI certification” is commonly used. It all started with our friends at the Department of Defense, who created an environment where a CMMI mandate feels and looks like a certification. By extension, many electronics and software companies in the commercial sector are routinely inserting requirements in their RFPs and contracts that suppliers be at a certain CMMI Level. You are not alone.  

But focusing on CMMI certification is crazy. Or, to put it more gently, it’s a misguided interpretation of what actually needs to be done.

Your clients want you to be better at what you do. That’s a noble intention. We all want that for ourselves, to be in a continuously improving environment.

But if you focus on CMMI certification, you end up losing all of the value of the CMMI.  You end up chasing the paper, not the improvements.

And here's a secret (shhh, this is between you and me so don't tell ANYONE)!  It's easier to do it right than it is to chase the paper!  And you also get the benefits.  What's not to like?

The value of the CMMI comes from the transformation of the culture of your company. It’s about changing the way we behave, so that we build products that are better than other companies that are building similar products - albeit with lame processes that cost more, produce lower quality, and make employees unhappy.

You can’t transform a culture by going out and getting certificates. When we put a “certification” mindset around getting better, it drives the wrong kind of behaviors.

And that can drive you crazy.

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.

CMMI Goals for a Prosperous New Year

Mr. CMMI Appraiser, I am the leader of a mid-sized engineering firm, and 2011 was our best year ever. But as I said to the team, let’s make sure 2011 isn’t our best year we ever had. We need to get the next level of CMMI certification, CMMI Maturity Level 3. What advice would you give us? ~ Wilson C.


Wilson, thank you for your note. First, Mrs. CMMI Appraiser and I would like to lift our glasses to wish you and yours a very happy New Year and a prosperous CMMI program.


Happy New Year!


And cheers to your team, Wilson, for striving to get better for 2012. But you make me nervous with this “next level of CMMI certification” business. IMHO, focusing certification isn't quite the right goal.  Do you really want my honest advice?  I'll try not to hurt you :)


Just resolve to be a great company.  The certification will follow....I promise!

See, without the right goals and objectives, companies just can’t do the right thing. And when they can’t do the right thing, they keep doing the wrong thing. That’s why you hear the same New Year’s resolutions every year:

1. I Resolve to Deliver Projects On-time
2. I Resolve to Keep Projects On Budget
3. I Resolve to Make Clients Less Unhappy
4. I Resolve to Have Fewer Meetings
5. I Resolve to Better Understand Risk

What’s wrong with this list? The company is focusing on what they want (the destination), and not the most important thing: what it will take to get there (the journey).


Like Calvin in the comic above, some executives are outraged at the suggestion that they need to change.


You may be perfect, just the way you are ... but maybe your focus just needs to change.


By focusing on CMMI Maturity Level 2 and 3, or CMMI certification, Wilson, nothing changes.  You are focusing on the destination. And it's not the destination you want to get to.  You're hoping for a first-class trip to Maui in December, but you'll end up with a bus trip to Neward in July.  That’s not the best way to be prosperous in the year ahead (but I'll give you a call from Maui, it's NICE here!).


By focusing on the journey, you are always learning how to make your company better. Prosperity is sure to follow.


So let's all change our ways together.  In our quest to be a better company in 2012, here are some questions to ask that will speed the learning process:


1. Where should I use the information I’ve garnered from measuring?

2.  What have I gained from having standardized processes

3.  What have I gained from  having process choices for my engineers in 2011?


4.  How can I to use that information to increase performance and organizational maturity in 2012?


Life is a journey. Set the right goals and objectives, and keep asking the right questions. With learning as your goal, you’ll stay on the path to greatness.


And THAT'S a New Year's resolution you can keep!


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.

Hark, the CMMI Angels Sing!

Rejoice! Rejoice! All across the land of CMMI, the day is finally here!

If you’ve been partying with us at Ask the CMMI Appraiser’s 12 Days of CMMI, you know all we wanted for Christmas was a successful CMMI program. Well, guess what?

WE GOT IT! Woo-hoo!

We know we never could have had a successful CMMI program without the wonderful Generic Practices (GPs), which every software and engineering executive needs to own to have any hope of experiencing continuous process and performance improvement. The GPs guided our every sure step.

Wow, what a day! The former CMMI consultant got a pair of footie pajamas. The CMMI sponsor got a new process tool-belt, and the CEO got a cute puppy to love on. And the CMMI Appraiser?

Check it out! Mrs. CMMI Appraiser gave me this cool vintage CMMI guitar.

So, what do you say, my revelers? The CMMI Christmas Carolers go electric! Let’s hit it one more time!

“On the twelfth day of Christmas, my boss she gave to me:

twelve new improvements,
eleven process flowcharts,
ten process levers,
nine months adhering,
eight measures captured,
seven roles connected,
six storage systems,
FIVE DAYS IN CLASS !
four new assignments,
three new compliers,
two process plans,
and a box with a shiny policy.” 

Generic Practice 3.2 - Collect Process Related Experiences

GP 3.2 guides us to collect process related experiences – or ways of “doing it better” next time.

This is the last Generic Practice, and it is my all-time favorite. It’s another pivotal practice, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving, all year, every year.

GP 3.2 is about making the process better, based on data and experience.

What is the “experience” of the project? This is the lesson we learned from implementing the process.

Like at Santa’s Workshop. As we said yesterday, nearly all of Santa’s elves are left-handed. But not all; some are righties. Santa found out early on that it does little good to design processes for all left-handed elves. Here’s how he figured it out:

One day, while attempting to weld a bicycle frame and earnestly trying to utilize the process as it was written, a right-handed elf took a blowtorch in his left hand. He accidentally burned the Workshop down. Though the elves escaped from harm, three snowmen tragically melted.

Santa decided his process created too many errors. He wanted to fix it to allow elves use the blowtorch on either side. Now his new write-up of the process says, “Place blowtorch on the left side or the right side, depending on your welding style. And for God’s sake, do not operate around snowmen!”

Same holds true in our organizations. Without GP 3.2, companies would keep running the project the same way they ran every project. Or, more commonly, your people would find that the process did not work, and just avoid or ignore the process, and do it any old way they wanted to.

Remember, we’re not building a product. We’re building a process, and that process has an architecture.  Like a product. . . but not.  Well maybe yes.

This might be a tall order, given all the egg-nog we’ve consumed these last 12 days, but we’ve got to wrap our head around the idea that we are not creating some process flowchart. We are creating a product that our company is going to use, and the essence of that product is that it is the architecture in which we do our work.

If I can leave you with one thought that will carry you through the new year, it is this: The Generic Practices represent the things that have to happen to make the architecture possible. These things are strategic in nature. As such, they are under YOUR control as management of the company.

GPs enable the Specific Practices (SPs) to be successful.

GP 3.2 calls on YOU to learn this lesson. Have your teams collect information at the end of projects, at the end of phases and the end of durations (or sprints), that help you improve. Once this information has been collected, GP 3.2 allows you to actually do something with it. Hold a retrospective that really gets this good information and feeds back into the process. Tell the team, “We can do this better next time, and here’s how.”

That’s it, my friends. Though our party is ending, remember that the CMMI is an ongoing celebration, a model for being joyful in the quest for becoming a great company. And GPs guide the way.

Have a happy New Year, and rock on!

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.

'Twas the Night Before CMMI

On the night before CMMI, the process police showed up waving their damn CMMI books at our “12 Days of CMMI” party, and asked the CMMI Appraiser to pipe down. Apparently, the neighbors complained.  They didn't like our well-organized and efficient partying!

The cops took down our side of the story. We described the awakening of the former CMMI Consultant, who saw a ghost and discovered that CMMI certification is not a very cheery goal. We told them about the transformation of our CMMI sponsor, who learned that the CMMI really is a tool-set to solve strategic problems. And we explained how our blissfully ignorant CEO gained a modicum of understanding that he needs to care about the right things to make his organization great.

We tried to prove to the officers: All we want for Christmas is a successful CMMI program.

“Save it for the judge,” they said. “All we want is to STOP the noise.”

Noise? You mean our song? You mean “The 12 Days of CMMI?” THAT SONG?  It's a joyful song which is sung to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which we use to celebrate the 12 Generic Practices (GPs), without which, no CMMI adoption can be successful?

 THAT song?

OK, we're up to one of my favorites - GP 3.1!  Let's go!

“On the eleventh day of Christmas, my boss she gave to me:

eleven process flowcharts,
ten process levers,
nine months adhering,
eight measures captured,
seven roles connected,
six storage systems,
FIVE DAYS IN CLASS!
four new assignments,
three new compliers,
two process plans,
and a box with a shiny policy.”

Generic Practice 3.1 – Establish a Defined Process

GP 3.1 guides us to establish a defined process.

This takes some explaining. Yes, the long arm of the law may be after us, but let’s pause long enough to make ourselves clear. There’s more to GP 3.1 than establishing a defined process. GP 3.1 is really guiding us to define how each process is going to be performed within the context of the project.

Now, before his awakening, our old CMMI Consultant insisted that, in order to "do CMMI," then "EVERYTHING MUST BE DONE THE SAME WAY EVERY TIME!"  phooey!

This is where the architecture comes in. For example, in the North Pole, Santa provides a facility for his elves to define their own process, based on guidelines and standards. For each project, they will establish a process that is defined for their project to meet their needs, all thanks to GP 3.1.

By the way, did you notice the numbering of these GPs? The first 10 GPs started with the number 2. That’s because they provided guidance through Maturity or Capability Level 2. These last GPs start with the number 3 because they are specific to Maturity or Capability Level 3.

GP 3.1 gives companies some definition around how they perform their work. After all, every project is going to have some uniqueness to it. It’s up to management to provide an environment in which the organization can manage that uniqueness in a structured way - based on a SET of processes that are available for use.

Let’s say Santa’s elves are welding bike frames for Christmas. Now, you may not have known this, but most elves are left-handed, and so the processes naturally are designed for left-handed elves. But a few of the elves are right handed. They naturally want to hold the blowtorch on the right side, rather than the left side, which is what the process calls for.

What to do? Well, Santa’s very flexible and agile. He understands the value in having his right-handed elves to do things righty.  Imagine what could happen if he didn't!  You've heard of a "scorched-earth policy?"  This is a scorched elf policy!  Accommodating the righty will require a customization of the process, based on the specific needs of the project. But Santa’s OK with that, because he’s got GP 3.1 to guide his sleigh tonight.

See, that’s why GP 3.1 is so important. Many companies try to standardize the way work gets done. When they do that, they try to make everybody do everything the same way. But when they do that, then they’ve got all of their people doing things the same way, but they are not necessarily the right things for their project.  They actually make it HARDER!  Those people deserve a piece of coal in their stocking.

In fact, without GP 3.1, the process police would surely head straight to the North Pole and burst in on Santa’s Workshop. They would apprehend each right-handed elf and move the blow torch to the left side, because that’s what the process says. And Christmas would be ruined.  And so would some elves.

Oh, look! What good timing! Mrs. CMMI Appraiser has brought out a fresh batch of egg-nog.

Let the record show that the process police sampled a mug, then another, then another …

And the next thing you know, the men in blue were out there caroling along with the rest of us. And there was not a darn thing the neighbors could do except cover their heads with a pillow and hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there.

Call it Christmas justice.

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.

The True Sprit of the CMMI

If you were with us yesterday here at Ask the CMMI Appraiser's “12 Days of CMMI” party, you witnessed a true Christmas miracle.

Yes, the abominable old CMMI sponsor , known for shouting at his engineers, “Do CMMI, or you’re FIRED!” suddenly became a champion of the 12 Generic Practices (GPs).

As you know, the GPs are the heart and soul of any successful CMMI program, and that’s all we really want for Christmas – a successful CMMI program. You can read the whole touching story here.

Awww ….  

Today a new challenge has arrived. Bliss Unobtrusive, the CEO, finally showed up at the party.

We love Bliss. He’s a chilled-out boss. But that “no problem” attitude of his keeps feeding slack into the organization, which we keep trying to tighten. But we’ll deal with Bliss when we get back from our daily round of CMMI caroling, which we like to think of as our happy path to greatness. Especially when we’ve had this much egg-nog.

Still with me? Today is Day 10 of the 12 Days of CMMI. Let’s make a joyful noise! 

“On the tenth day of Christmas, my boss she gave to me: 

ten process levers,

nine months adhering,

eight measures captured,
seven roles connected,
six storage systems,
FIVE DAYS IN CLASS!
four new assignments,
three new compliers,
two process plans,
and a box with a shiny policy.” 

Generic Practice 2.10 – Review Status with Higher Level Management

The tenth GP guides us to review status with higher level management.  But that doesn't mean what you think it means.

It means management needs to care....

Enter Bliss, the CEO I was just telling you about. “Of course I care!” Bliss says. “I love this company like one of my children. Specifically, Hope, my oldest daughter, who needs glasses.”

Gotcha. But that’s not the issue, Bliss. We know you care … but do you care about the right things? Are you looking at the right indicators? Do you even know what the right metrics are?

“Well, no.”

How happy are your customers? Do you have a lot of rework here? How productive are your employees? What kind of defects do you have?

“I don’t know.  But we hire great people.”

So I turned to the CFO, who has been snarfing Christmas cookies as fast as Mrs. CMMI Appraiser can bake them. Sir, what are your two biggest challenges right now?  Please finish chewing first.

“We have late projects, and over-budget projects," he said.  "Our clients are unhappy.  Our people are unhappy.  They have to come in earlier, stay later, work weekends, work nights, do whatever they can do. We have too many meetings.  Our best people quit to go work for our competitors. Nothing we do is sustainable or scalable.   We’re losing market-share. We’ll be lucky if we’re still in business one year from today. My stomach hurts.”

Dude, that was like 50 problems. I only asked for two.

Now let’s ask the CEO. Bliss, what is the solution?

“GP 2.10?”

Correct.  Or better stated, applying the lessons of GP 2.10 in our adoption of the CMMI toward continuous improvement.

Again, GP 2.10 means management needs to care. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Bliss doesn’t care. It just means he doesn’t care about the right things. The answers I was seeking are exactly the kind of information he needs to have in order to manage his business with process levers. But he didn’t care about that.

See, when you care enough to embrace GP 2.10, you get this wonderful gift called Process Levers.

A process lever is something you do to the process to change a behavior or an outcome. They use process levers at Santa’s Workshop (you knew that was coming). In fact, Santa thinks about the CMMI primarily as a magical construct that gives him the framework to develop process levers.

Let’s say Santa was faced with lots of changing requirements, lots of mistakes in requirements and lots of disagreement about what needs to be done. If the Workshop is churning a lot on this – if they have more than 10% or 15% churn on their requirements – Santa can pull a process lever.

The lever he pulls says, “We need to validate the requirements in a different way as they come in the door. We need to catch these things before they get to test, before they get to design and code or build, and before they get to requirements spec drill-down.”  In other words, we need to CHANGE the process.

Process levers are built right into the CMMI at the North Pole. But you can use them anywhere.

See, the cool thing about the CMMI is that it is not so much an engineering model as it is a behavioral improvement model. It actually gives us data (which comes from GP 2.8 and GP 2.9.) that allows us to say, “The next time we do this thing, is there a way to do it better, faster, cheaper, with higher quality and less costs?” – or whatever our goals and objectives might be.

Know how well the process is working, and whether or not people are using it.

That’s the true spirit of the CMMI, Bliss.

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.

The Abominable CMMI Program Man

Merry Christmas! Welcome to the 12 Days of CMMI Party here at Ask the CMMI Appraiser blog. Hope you brought a toothbrush because this party is in its second week, and we’re not letting up any time soon!

As you know if you’ve been along for the ride, early last week, a bunch of us process geeks got together and decided to celebrate the 12 Generic Practices (GPs) by championing one GP each day.

Why? Because we love the GPs! We believe they are the very spirit of CMMI. And because we love any excuse to sample Mrs. Appraiser’s egg-nog and get a little wild and crazy!

Have we succeeded? Well, a former CMMI Consultant was discovered taking a nap in our bathtub. The QA director lost her boot when she stomped out ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A SUCCESSFUL CMMI PROGRAM! in the snow.  And a neighbor got irate because we keep circling the block singing “The 12 Days of CMMI” (to the tune of the Twelve Days of Christmas”) at the tops of our lungs.

I'd say, so far so good.

But the wildest thing to happen so far was when the CMMI sponsor, formerly the grouchiest, meanest, foulest-breathed person at the party, decided to drop his threatening demeanor ("Do CMMI or you're FIRED!"), and become a positive supporter of the CMMI program as a way to actually improve performance.  Who could have seen THAT coming?

So yes, it’s wild. Yes, it’s crazy. And yes, it’s ...

… Day 9 of the 12 Days of CMMI! So put your coat back on and join us for some more caroling around the neighborhood. Let them hear you now!

“On the ninth day of Christmas, my boss she gave to me:

nine months adhering,
eight measures captured,
seven roles connected,
six storage systems,
FIVE DAYS IN CLASS!
four new assignments,
three new compliers,
two process plans,
and a box with a shiny policy.”

Generic Practice 2.9 – Objectively Evaluate Adherence

The ninth generic practice (GP2.9) guides us to objectively evaluate adherence of the process against its process description, standards, and procedures, and address noncompliance.

In other words, GP 2.9 is the act of capturing the data about adherence and reporting it out.  This implies some level of oversight.

Take Santa’s Workshop. Santa must understand whether the elves are using the process or not. If they are not, why not? What’s the problem? How can we fix it? What did we do wrong? How could they get more value out of it?

If they don't know whether the elves are USING it, how can they know they need to fix it?  So, to all you people that say "this process blows, I'm not using it"....uhhh, WAKE UP!

GP 2.9 instructs Santa, as an executive, on what to look at to assure his processes are being embraced. It also instructs him on what to do with what he sees (i.e., report on his findings with some frequency).

What does that mean, “with some frequency?” How often should you report?

Well, every workshop is different. Your choices include reporting weekly, monthly, quarterly, hourly, or whatever is the right frequency for you. Santa does it annually, but he’s special. Whatever your frequency is, the important part is that you objectively evaluate adherence to the process, and report on it regularly.

Performing at the highest level of organizational excellence is what we’ve come to expect of Santa.  I mean, what would happen if he didn't actually deliver all those presents?  Have you seen "The Santa Claus?"  It's unthinkable!

But we were shocked when we saw the CMMI sponsor starting to behave like a mean-old .

Used to be, the old CMMI sponsor was an absolute monster. His CMMI team did the work it took to be a great company (and, as a natural consequence, achieved the appropriate CMMI Maturity Level).

The CMMI sponsor gave them about 90 seconds to celebrate before pulling out his watch and saying, “OK, how soon do we get to Level 4?”

Imagine how horrible that sounded to the CMMI team. Here they were, making significant personal investments in transforming themselves and their company, and the CMMI sponsor didn’t get it. He still thought it was a race.

“I want the next level by Tuesday!” he growled.

It was really abominable.

He was just like Bumbles, the Abominable Snowman, in that cartoon, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Remember? The mighty Bumbles captures Rudolf’s parents and girlfriend, and threatens to ruin Christmas, until he is defeated by Rudolf and the dentist-elf, and tamed by their friend the Prospector.

The same thing apparently happened with our CMMI sponsor. He kept dealing with the same issues of time, personnel and costs until, ultimately, those issues conquered him. His boss called him on the carpet and said, “Transform, or else.”

The CMMI sponsor finally began to realize that, instead of farming work out overseas, or laying people off, he had to look at the CMMI as a way to dramatically and radically improve the way he ran his department, and not just a way to document their work.

He took our CMMI Training. At the end of the second day, he came up to us, his face flushed with excitement.

“I see the light!” he said. “I see that the CMMI really is a tool-set to solve most of our strategic problems!”

Phew! Looks like we saved Christmas again.

So, party on, revelers! And join us tomorrow for Day 10 of the 12 Days of 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 running a successful CMMI program.

The Ghost of CMMI Appraisals Past

The previous CMMI consultant gave us a real scare today when he suffered flashbacks to past CMMI appraisals, and let out a scream.  "BUT I GOT THEM THEIR CERTIFICATE!"

In case you came late to the party, here’s what’s happening.

We’re two-thirds into our annual 12 Days of CMMI holiday party, the festivus for the rest of us, or as I like to call it "holiday treats for the process geeks."  Each day we’ve celebrated one of the 12 Generic Practices (GPs), which are the very essence of the CMMI.

Sounds like harmless fun, right?

Well, it was … until the previous CMMI consultant – last seen napping in the bathtub – had a nightmare, and let out a blood-curdling shriek.

“It was awful,” he said as we rushed to his assistance. “I saw the Ghost of CMMI Appraisals Past. He showed me everything I ever did wrong.”

“There, there,” Virginia, the developer, said. “It was just a dream.”

“No, it was real!” the previous CMMI consultant said. “It really happened! I told my client they had to ‘get a level.’ I told another client ‘the SEI makes you document everything.’ To a third client I actually said ‘It’s all about the documents!’”

Now, the CMMI Appraiser is a compassionate guy, but how could we possibly empathize? The rest of us have always known that CMMI Appraisals are NOT about documents. Documents are merely one method for verifying process performance. And the amount of documents (number, size, and scope) should reflect the needs of your projects. If you took a CMMI Training course and "learned" that the CMMI was about documents –  go ask for your money back!

The previous CMMI consultant started sobbing, “I want to be like you guys! I want to change!”

Yea, I'll help you change.... professions.

Christmas can be an emotional time.  Only the joyful acquisition of knowledge would set him free.  So we gave the poor guy a belt of egg-nog, threw a coat over his shoulders and took him out in the cold to go caroling with us. After all …

It’s Day 8 of the 12 Days of CMMI. Sing it!

“On the eighth day of Christmas, my boss she gave to me:

eight measures captured,
seven roles connected,
six storage systems,
FIVE DAYS IN CLASS!
four new assignments,
three new compliers,
two process plans,
and a box with a shiny policy.”

Generic Practice 2.8 – Monitor and Control the Process

The eighth generic practice guides us to monitor and control the process against the plan for performing the process and take appropriate corrective action.

GP 2.8 is all about answering one simple question:

"How do you know?"

How do you know if the process works?  How would you make it better?  Are things improving?  Getting worse?  Static?  Because if they're getting worse, guess what!  You blew it!

This is a very pivotal practice -  maybe the most pivotal. This gives us data about how well the process works.  If we don't know that - why are we doing this?

Here are some of the data: 

• How is the process performing?
• Are we getting the results we expected?
• How can we make it better? 

Example?  Let’s say Santa wanted to monitor and control the process of knitting sweaters.  In an effort to monitor and control the elves’ development process, Santa will want to capture how many stitches it takes to knit a sweater using the current process, how many mistakes are discovered during formal "elf-reviews," and how many defects are in his sweaters. This is data about how well the sweater-making is going. GP 2.8 keeps Santa’s Workshop in a holly-jolly mood.

There are many different options for monitoring process performance. Data is reported on, at some point in time (potentially in real time), throughout the entire life-cycle. Sometimes it's more anectodotal. A healthy company has a combination of both quantitative and qualitative data.

Failing to monitor and control processes is not an option. And yet we see many so-called "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.  You end up with some really ugly sweaters.

But it's not about goodness they say!  Bah humbug!  It may not be about "goodness" but it is about KNOWING whether or not you have goodness.

Talk about the nightmare before Christmas!

Fortunately, there are better dreams to be had, and GP 2.8 helps make them a reality.  As we keep saying, the CMMI is not about documents. It’s about learning to be a great company.

Our advice to the previous CMMI consultant?  Be a great CMMI consultant. In my opinion, here are the characteristics of a great CMMI consultant:

A great CMMI consultant will TEACH you how to become successful Process Designers and Implementers so you can synthesize the right solutions for your company

A great CMMI consultant will TEACH you the most effective ways to communicate

A great CMMI consultant will TEACH you how to run a successful Process Action Team, or Special Interest Group

A great CMMI consultant will TEACH you about how your SEPG can be successful, and how it should evolve

A great CMMI consultant will TEACH you how to get value from your process – not just to “pass” an appraisal

A great CMMI consultant will TEACH you about “Just Enough, not Too Much”

Learning is something we do in Christmas Present.  GP 2.8 assures that there is no need to live in Christmas Past.
 
Join us tomorrow for Christmas Future.

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.

Learn more about CMMI Adoption at www.broadswordsolutions.com.