Learning time! “CMMI: Everything You NEED to Know!”

Dear Readers,

The learning experiences keep on coming!

Registration is NOW OPEN for our FREE presentation of “CMMI: Everything You NEED to Know!” on February 26 @ noon EST, and we’d love to have you join us on the Webinar.

Get your ticket here!

Sign up for the CMMI Webinar on Thursday, February 26 @ noon EST

New to CMMI? Great! Participating in the “CMMI: Everything You NEED to Know” Webinar is an excellent choice for anyone who is interested in learning new ways to get better. Whether that means better software, better finance, better product development, better marketing or HR, learning more about the CMMI can help you make immediate, lasting improvements in your company.

Been working with CMMI for a while? That’s great, too. Participating in the “CMMI: Everything You NEED to Know” Webinar is a smart way to learn new approaches to solving chronic problems, making it well worth your time to participate.

After all, the most useful thing about CMMI is that it provides a framework for changing behaviors and changing culture that can establish an environment for allowing you to operate like the great company you know you can be – for the long term.  With learning as your goal, you’ll stay on the path to greatness.  The Webinar shows you how.

So come learn with us! We still have space available, and did we mention?  It’s FREEEEEEEE!

Sign up for the "CMMI: Everything You NEED to Know."

Register here.

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 and performance improvement program.

What good are the "Generic Practices" of CMMI when we’re different?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser – what good are the Generic Practices in the CMMI? Our company is very different from our competitors. I don’t see how something “generic” can help us. ~ Bob L, Arlington, VA

Bob, let’s not get tripped up over the word “generic” here. It’s easy to do, and not uncommon. For this very reason, for many years, I have been insisting that as better name for the Generic Practice (GPs) would “Most Important Practices” because of how very important they are to your success. So just between you and me, let’s call them Most Important (not generic) and I’ll explain how to customize them with questions specific to the unique way YOU do business below.

The "Generic Practices" Aren't Generic!

First, Bob, you’ll need to accept the basic truth about CMMI. The CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), is a model that helps us build better software and run better projects.

The most important part of the CMMI is the GPs, which we have agreed to call Most Important Practices. The Most Important Practices apply to all process areas in the CMMI – which is why they are so important.

Regardless of what type of method, technique or process that you use, the Most Important Practices can really help jump start the success of those practices. You can apply the Most Important Practices to activities that the organization performs. You don’t necessarily apply the Most Important Practices to your individual projects.

Starting to get the picture? Maybe it would help to give you some examples. Here are a sampling of Most Important Practices provided by the CMMI (there are 12 in all), along with several relevant questions that the Most Important Practice is guiding you to ask:

MOST IMPORTANT PRACTICE: SET EXPECTATIONS

• How long are our Sprints?
• What kind of retrospectives do we have?
• What kind of code reviews should we run?
• Should we comment our code, and how should we comment it?

MOST IMPORTANT PRACTICE: PLAN

• How many Sprints are we going to have?
• How many phases are we going to have?
• How many releases are we going to have?
• What kind of requirements management tools are we going to use?

MOST IMPORTANT PRACTICE: ASSIGN RESPONSIBILITY

• Who is going to be involved?
• When are they going to be involved?

MOST IMPORTANT PRACTICE: PROVIDE TRAINING

• Are we providing training? For example, if I’m going to ask you to do Planning Poker and use it as a way to estimate the size of a project or a particular user story, do I plan to train you on how to use those tools?

MOST IMPORTANT PRACTICE: MONITOR THE HEALTH OF THE PROCESS

• How is the process working?
• Are we getting value out of our sprints, phases and the tools that we are using, out of the techniques that we are employing?
• If we aren’t getting value, why not? And if not, let’s make them better!
• Are people actually using these processes?
• If they aren’t, why not?

MOST IMPORTANT PRACTICE: MAKE SURE MANAGEMENT CARES ABOUT THE RIGHT THINGS

• Is management paying attention to all of this data?
• Are they doing something about it to make the company an even better company?

MOST IMPORTANT PRACTICE: CONSTANTLY IMPROVE

• Are we constantly improving the processes?

As I said, Bob, there are 12 Most Important Practices. Not one of them is "generic" when applied to your specific business goals.  This sampling of Most Important Practices will get you started in your understanding that CMMI is not about documents, forms or compliance. Nor is CMMI a “one-size-fits-all” proposition. Adopting the CMMI is 100% about solving the business problems that are specific to your company. The more we use it, and the more we work with organizations that are using the CMMI, the more we realize that this is a model that's about how great companies perform – each according to its own uniqueness.

For more information about the Most Important Practices and other ways the CMMI helps you get better at what you are ALREADY doing, be sure to sign up for our Webinar on February 26 @ noon: “CMMI – Everything You Need to Know!”

Register here.

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 and performance improvement program.

How can CMMI make us better when we don’t use process?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser – I am new to the CMMI and don’t really know much about it. Our management wants to be Level 2 and have an appraisal, but how can CMMI make us better when, as an agile shop, we don’t use process? ~ Charles S.

Hey, Charles, welcome aboard! It’s always great to meet people who are new to CMMI. You know, a lot of folks have the same reaction to CMMI at first. As a Lead Appraiser, I work with a many Scrum teams that started out by telling me, “We don’t really use processes. We don’t like processes at all.”

And I say …

You don’t use processes? What about these?

Planning Poker

Refractoring

Velocity

Sprint Demos

Pair Programming

Test-Driven Development

Everything on this list is a process, also known as a technique or method. And for every one of these processes, there is a CMMI equivalent that we use to make it better.

I’ll give you an example. In the CMMI, we have a practice called, “Identify all relevant stakeholders” for the estimating process. Sounds very academic and very dry. But if we re-word it using agile language, we might ask the following: “What dudes need to be there to play Planning Poker?”

Same exact practice – figuring out who those right people are. Asking it differently helps improve our Planning Poker process, and as a result we have a process that says, “The right people need to show up to play Planning Poker.”

In this way, we use the CMMI to make Planning Poker better. That’s one of the practices in the CMMI.

It works the same with Refractoring. There is a practice guides us to reconcile the work, based on the current need. Well, there’s a lot to that. What does reconciling mean? Simply this: Involve the proper stakeholders. In agile lingo: Bring in the right dudes.

The CMMI helps make these processes better through the 12 characteristics of successful companies that it outlines.  The 12 characteristics are known as the "Generic Practices," or GPs. These GPs are the 12 things that need to be right for an organization to be successful. One of them is, we need to figure out who the right people are and make sure they are there. Another is, people need to be trained on how to use it. So if we say, “We have to use Planning Poker,” we better give people good training on how to make it work. Using the CMMI as a guide, you understand that people need to be trained.

A lot of organizations tell me, “Hey, we are already using Planning Poker. We are not really getting the results we want from it. It’s not that accurate. What’s going on?”

The answer? Look to the 12 GPs. They allow us to ask the right questions about our work, such as:

• Stakeholders aren’t showing up? Well, that’s one problem. Let’s fix that.
• People aren’t trained? That’s another problem. Let’s fix that.

See, the 12 GPs in the CMMI are almost like a checklist. This checklist covers all the things about Planning Poker, in this case, that we didn’t really think about when we implemented it. We just sort of threw a pack of cards on the table and said, “Go read an article and start playing.”

And maybe that’s OK in some shops, for some projects. But you will surely get better results if you deliberately and thoughtfully go through the 12 attributes within the CMMI and use them as a guide for improving the way you do your work. That’s how to use the CMMI as a checklist to make process better.

Interested in knowing more about how the CMMI helps you get better at what you are ALREADY doing? Then be sure to sign up for our Webinar on February 26 @ noon: “CMMI – Everything You Need to Know!”

Register here.

Hope to 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.

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