Why are Values such a Big Deal?

OK, CMMI Appraiser. I know Corporate Values are important, but it seems like every company says the same thing. I just don’t see how they make a real difference in what we do. What is the Big Deal about values?

Dear Reader: 

That is a great question. And, it’s one we’re serious about.

Let’s assume you have a darn good company, or that you are on the path to becoming one. What makes you that way?

Leadership, your expertise, and your people are important. So are your business processes – the way you do your work, every day. Good and great companies do their work in a predictable, consistent way. 

But, what happens when a company’s values become disconnected from the way people do their work? We think it leads to bad decisions, strained customer relationships, and poor quality. 

To be useful, Values must guide behavior. 

At Broadsword, we call this “making values operational.” We use a “values-based architecture” that links Values, Methodologies, and Techniques. Our goal is to trace a direct link between the company’s values and how work gets done. 

Here’s an example. If one of your values is to “incrementally deal with issues and risk,” you might select a method such as Scrum and use a technique like Daily Stand-up. If you are an Agile shop, choosing Waterfall with this value would be a problem.

I am convinced that Values are critical. They have an impact on customers, on employees, and on the way products are developed and code is written. 

We have nine core values that we have “operationalized.” Each value guides our behavior and can be traced to how we do our work. Our values range from being “creative problem solvers focused on our clients” to being “fun and hassle free to work with.”   

We think our Values reflect who we are as a company. They’re definitely a big deal.

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.

What is the status of the transition to the CMMI Institute?

Hey, Jeff! What is the status of the CMMI operating authority? ~ AgileDC Participant

To those who were able to join us at AgileDC in the National's Capital, it was great to see you! What a treat to be with so many people who care deeply about Agile.  The best part for me was making new friends and sharing new strategies for making Agile stronger with the CMMI at my “Agile Resiliency” presentation.

You know, one of the reasons I love to give CMMI trainings and presentations is, it’s a great chance to meet so many of you readers out there. For example, I met a woman who remembered the series of posts we did after the SEI’s announcement last spring and summer.  As you may recall, in May, the SEI announced that operation of the CMMI would be moved to a new business unit within Carnegie Mellon University.

“So what’s the status?” she asked. “Who is taking over operations of the CMMI?”

The transition of CMMI operations is well underway. The new organization is named "CMMI Institute" (www.cmmiinstitute.com).  It is headed up by global technology executive, Kirk Botula, formerly the COO of Confluence.  I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Kirk in my capacity as Chairman of the SEI’s Partner Advisory Board.

Coincidentally, one of my first stops after the AgileDC Conference was in Pittsburgh for strategic meetings with Kirk. We met in CMMI Institute’s new offices.  Click here to read my impressions of my visit to the new CMMI Institute.

Again, great to see so many of you at AgileDC.  Keep reading Ask the CMMI Appraiser for updates and insights on the current events that are shaping our industry.

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

What are you thankful for?

Dear Readers,

This Thanksgiving, as Mrs. CMMI Appraiser and I sit down at the holiday table with our Little Appraisers, friends, and extended family, we have a lot to be thankful for:

• SEPGs that are open to learning how to deploy processes
• Developers who embrace the CMMI as set of guidelines for performance improvement 
• CMMI sponsors who accept help in guiding their program
• CEOs who accept help in facilitating strategic decisions 
• CMMI consultants who do not over-engineer the solution and create "process debt" 
• Lead Appraisers who build consensus amongst executives in the business
• Executives who take appropriate action and are not heavy-handed 
• Directors who put a communications strategy together and execute it
• Engineers who pursue CMMI training and embrace useful process 
• Management who motivate engineers to reach for great behaviors
• QA groups that help us and don’t try to beat us into submission

And last but not least, we’re thankful for YOU, the Reader. We’d like to show our gratitude by offering you our new eBook. Look for the link to download your free copy, right here on Ask the CMMI Appraiser on Black Friday.

‘Til then … have a happy Thanksgiving!

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.

5 Minutes with the CMMI Appraiser, Fifth Question: What is the CMMI Appraiser’s mission?

[Over the past several days, the CMMI Appraiser has been sharing snippets from a conversation with Bill Fox on 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success™. Bill interviewed the CMMI Appraiser about how the CMMI can be used to create resiliency in the agile method. Here’s “An Iterative and Incremental Approach to Process Improvement with Jeff Dalton.”]

Hey, Jeff, you are addressing typically unseen issues that are below the waterline of the iceberg that, so often, many organizations seem to learn the hard way. How would you describe the mission of your company? ~ Bill Fox, 5 Minutes to PI Success

Hey, Bill, Broadsword’s mission is simple. We want to help people understand – really understand – that this discussion is about culture. It’s not about CMMI certification.

That’s the big message that I most often deliver to clients. As a matter of fact, I’m on my way to give a CMMI training in Dayton, Ohio on this subject. I will tell them that process isn’t overhead. Process is the definition of how we do work every day. That’s our mission.

At conferences, I use a little trick to shake people out of their old way of thinking. I talk about how I have a new way to spell “process.” Then I bring up on the screen a phonetic spelling of the word “engineering.” I let people look at it for a minute and decode it. Ultimately, you hear some folks say, “Ah-ha!” along with some laughter.

Why do I do this? I think it really makes the point that process isn’t this thing we do that adds overhead, time and energy. No, if you do it that way, then you did it wrong. Process is about how we perform engineering tasks every day.

Is that hard to accept? Not at all. Every engineer in the world, if he thinks about it and it’s presented to him the right way—and we think our agileCMMI method is that right way—any good engineer who hears this argument will be in agreement and will embrace it.

That’s the mission we’re on at Broadsword. That’s what we’re all about. We invite folks to learn more at our web site, www.broadswordsolutions.com.

Five minutes with the CMMI Appraiser is up.

And this concludes our “Five Minutes the the CMMI Appraiser” series. Please check back soon for information on downloading the free eBook, “Five Minutes the the CMMI Appraiser”. 

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.

5 Minutes with the CMMI Appraiser, Fourth Question: What makes the light come on?

[Over the next several days, the CMMI Appraiser has been sharing snippets from a conversation with Bill Fox on 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success™. Bill interviewed CMMI Appraiser about how the CMMI can be used to create resiliency in the agile method. Here’s “An Iterative and Incremental Approach to Process Improvement with Jeff Dalton.”]

Hey, Jeff, when I have been involved with a successful implementation, I can see that idea take hold in people as they observe things happening and results happening and things changing. What makes it so that, all of a sudden, a light switches on with regards to agileCMMI? ~ Bill Fox, 5 Minutes to PI Success

Hey, Bill, I think the term "consultant" is used rather loosely with a lot of people. I believe that to be a total consultant means helping them understand culture, helping them communicate vision, helping them learn. These things are all above and beyond the CMMI certification discussion, right?

Anyone can claim to be a CMMI consultant. But only a small amount of people in the world have the requisite skills, training, experience, and certifications that qualify them for the task - and an even smaller group of them have a proven track record.

To make the light bulb come on, here are some things this CMMI Appraiser tries to make engineering and software professionals be aware of:

CMMI is about CHANGE. And change is hard. If your CMMI consultant doesn't demonstrate an understanding of the complexity of culture change, and have the consulting skills to help your organization set goals, communicate, solve problems, and help you transform in a positive way, then they don't have the skills to do the job.

CMMI is about leadership. If your CMMI consultant isn't experienced at bringing leadership into the process, isn't skilled with executive interaction, and doesn't know how to speak with and motivate your management in a professional and substantive way, then they don't have the skills to help you.

CMMI is about improvement. And improvement succeeds by applying incremental and iterative techniques to steadily improve performance over time. If your CMMI consultant doesn't come with a structured methodology that leads you through this process, they probably don't have what it takes to do the job.

CMMI is about behavior. It's not about forms, documents, and templates. If your CMMI consultant focuses on making you fill out forms and templates for everything, and wants you to produce hundreds of the deliverables, you should be asking yourself why this is useful - and decide if your consultant's approach makes sense for you.

CMMI is about choice. It's not about making everyone do the same thing. Every consultant comes with biases and past experience, but the good ones are open minded and focus on leading you to the right conclusions - not telling you what you should do. Trust me, they don't KNOW what you should do, because it depends on what you ARE doing. They don't work at your company and can't know what works until they spend some time with you. A lot of time.

These things are above and beyond the actual CMMI knowledge, which is routinely and astoundingly inadequate among many people who claim to be “CMMI consultants.”

So our methodology has all that built into it. It sort of came about over the years as just a reaction to all these problems that so-called CMMI consultants were causing our clients, before our clients came to us.  It's been great to see that light bulb come on.

Today's five minutes with the CMMI Appraiser is up.

Please check back soon for Question #5: What is the CMMI Appraiser’s mission?

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.

Five Minutes with the CMMI Appraiser, Third Question: Do companies need to be “sold” on agileCMMI?

[Over the next several days, the CMMI Appraiser will be sharing snippets from a conversation with Bill Fox on 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success™. Bill interviewed the CMMI Appraiser about how the CMMI can be used to create resiliency in agile methods. Here’s “An Iterative and Incremental Approach to Process Improvement with Jeff Dalton.”]

Hey, Jeff, in terms of working with new clients, do you need to find organizations that embrace the agileCMMI methodology, or do you have to sell it? ~ Bill Fox, 5 Minutes to PI Success

Hey, Bill.  It’s an interesting question in our industry. If you talk to some of my peers, they would tell you about their reluctance to engage with clients who seek "CMMI certification" versus clients who really want to achieve greatness. Staying away from the former and only working with the latter is kind of a thing for some of them.  That's cool.

That approach doesn't fit for me, however.  I believe that everybody deserves a chance to be great, whether they realize it or not. At our company, we refer to this as the “Path to Greatness," and it’s our slogan.

Would we want more companies to come to us already looking for more ways to be great? Sure! But the truth is 50% of clients in our space come to us saying, “I need a CMMI certification,” or “The federal government says I need this piece of paper,” or “I need to be CMMI Level Two or CMMI Level Three.”

We say, that’s OK, business is business! And that’s the difference between this CMMI Appraiser and some other folks. If they don’t already have the “Path to Greatness” mentality, or appreciate the power of agileCMMI, I consider it part of my job to turn them, to change their minds.

But it goes even deeper than that. This is bigger than my company or my clients. I believe it’s our responsibility – all of us – to help companies understand the tremendous advantages of cultivating a strong desire to achieve greatness with the CMMI as one of their tools. As process improvement experts or CMMI consultants, it’s our job to help our clients understand why having a broader, more holistic attitude toward the CMMI is good for them.

See, the more we use the CMMI, and the more we work with companies that are using the CMMI, the more we realize that this is a model that's about how great companies perform.

Rarely does someone come to us with that understanding in advance. They just want a "CMMI certification," and they want to know the cost. My job is to say, “We can help you with this. We can help you get the certification.” I then start working with them and really start to change their attitude about how agileCMMI works and how it can benefit them.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. I would say that I need about three-to-six months with a client to change their cultural understanding of what it is they’re trying to do with CMMI anyway. The great thing is, once you help them believe it, they’re evangelists. They go off and spread the word very quickly among their people.

In my opinion, this is what is missing from our industry. There are a lot of so-called CMMI consultants out there because, frankly, it’s not that hard to put the acronym on your business card. Some of them  are pitching CMMI work, or process improvement work, and doing a disservice to the industry.  They tell clients that the CMMI is all about ratings and certificates.  They never mention paths or greatness.  Without that the CMMI is just an empty shell.

Sadly, there are very few guys and gals in our industry that get this.  But this is the real consulting help we can give to our clients. We can help them understand why this is approach is valuable to them, and how they can use it as a strategic weapon to grow their business.

That’s why I’m so passionate about this, Bill. I consider it part of my duty to educate everyone on that fact. I hope people who read this interview really get that CMMI is not about certifications or achieving levels, although that certainly is an outcome. Instead, the CMMI is about an organizational improvement strategy that can help companies be more powerful and productive.

Today's five minutes with the CMMI Appraiser is up.

Please check back soon for the Fourth Question: What makes the light come on for a successful agileCMMI adoption?

And don’t miss our next "CMMI: On Location" professional development experience. The CMMI Appraiser is on location in Washington DC on the topic of agileResiliency and using CMMI to make agile stronger at AgileDC conference on October 23rd.

Click to 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 program.

Five Minutes with the CMMI Appraiser, Second Question: What was the genesis of agileCMMI?

[NOTE: Over the next several days, the CMMI Appraiser will be sharing snippets from a conversation with Bill Fox on 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success™. Bill interviewed the CMMI Appraiser about how the CMMI can be used to create resiliency in the agile method. Here’s “An Iterative and Incremental Approach to Process Improvement with Jeff Dalton.”] 

Hey, Jeff, what was the genesis of getting to that strategy of using an iterative and incremental approach that you call agileCMMI? Did you evolve it over time? ~ Bill Fox, 5 Minutes to PI Success 

Hey, Bill.  My background is in consulting. I was with Ernst & Young for ten years, and in software development. In my days at Ernst & Young, when I was doing a lot of business consulting or process consulting, I noted that almost every process implementation was a failure. It’s a little bit like large-scale software development implementations often fail.

I really struggled with this.  I asked, “What’s the reason behind all this?” and I discovered two things. One is that human beings don’t learn in a Waterfall way; they learn in an incremental way. And adopting and using new processes is, above all else, a learning experience. People learning how to do things; people learning that this is good for them; people learning how to change the way that they think, because that’s really what process improvement is all about — changing the culture and changing the way we think.

So going back almost ten years, I really started thinking about, “How do we turn this on its head so that we can make process implementation a learning experience?” and I came to the conclusion that taking an iterative and incremental approach was the way to do that.

The second part of that is, as a software person, I realized that there are so many process experts out there in the industry, talking about Six Sigma, CMMI and process improvement, and ISO, and using all these sort of process-centric languages, and I realized that until we started talking to software developers and project managers in language they can understand—things like object orientation, encapsulation, polymorphism and all the words, phrases, and concepts associated with software development—that they really wouldn’t get what we were talking about.

This agileCMMI method not only takes the first concept of incremental and iterative design and deployment, but it also embraces the second concept, by presenting everything to developers in a language they understand and using UML diagrams and data flow diagram, things they’re used to using, as opposed to trying to shove them into the process world, which is a world they don’t want to be in.

All of these things together sort of brought me to the conclusion that process isn’t overhead.  Process isn’t this foreign thing that we make people do.  Process is another word for engineering.  And we, as a process-proven industry, have done an awful job over the decades really explaining that well enough.

Our agileCMMI methodology solves both of those problems, and we’ve had really good success with it. Clients embrace it wholeheartedly.  Some have even gone and started using it in other parts of their business, like sales, marketing, HR and finance.  It has really been a very successful adventure for us.

Today's five minutes with the CMMI Appraiser is up. 

Please check back soon for the Third Question: Do companies need to be “sold” on embracing agileCMMI?

And don’t miss our next "CMMI: On Location" professional development experience. The CMMI Appraiser is on location in Washington DC on the topic of agileResiliency and using CMMI to make agile stronger at AgileDC conference on October 23rd.

Click it for a ticket, and 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 program.

Five Minutes with the CMMI Appraiser: What’s the best process improvement strategy you've used?

[Over the next several days, the CMMI Appraiser will be sharing snippets from a conversation with Bill Fox on 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success™. Bill interviewed the CMMI Appraiser about how the CMMI can be used to create resiliency in agile methods. Here’s “An Iterative and Incremental Approach to Process Improvement with Jeff Dalton.”]

Hey, Jeff, I’d like to start by asking: What’s the best process improvement, strategy or tactic that has worked really well for you or your clients? ~ Bill Fox, 5 Minutes to PI Success

Hey, Bill.  The hardest part of process improvement is not telling clients what they should do—that’s not even part of what we do.  It's not writing a process for them.  It’s not even getting them to write a process and propose one and deploy it, although that is useful. The hardest part, and the thing that’s most impactful and what works most for us, is how you deploy process improvement to the community. In other words, how you get people to embrace it and use it.

The approach my company Broadsword Solutions uses has been very successful.  It is an iterative and incremental approach we call agileCMMI, our branded approach.

agileCMMI uses agile methods such as incremental delivery, continuous build, collaboration, etc. It applies the same techniques we use when writing software to deploy process and get people to embrace process.

Embracing the process is key to overall success.  After all, the best process in the world is useless if you can’t get people to actually embrace it and adopt it.  And until they embrace it and adopt it, you don’t even know if the process you developed is even useful. 

agileCMMI helps organizations embrace processes successfully.  agileCMMI is an incremental method where we deploy small components of the process in releases over time. For example, we might release two or three sub-processes and test it out, and then once the company has embraced those small, easy to digest, useful things, we’ll give them another set of small, digestible, useful things.

We plan it all out in advance.  You are getting appropriate pieces at the appropriate times. And the reason it works is that’s how we learn. We learn as human beings by digesting things in very small pieces. So when you look at so many process implementations that have failed, you see some commonalities.  Typically the company tried to throw a big binder or a big website at all their employees and said, “This is going to be your new process.”  They were trying to get them to eat an elephant in one bite.

agileCMMI goes about this differently.  We're not going to force you to do anything.  We’re giving people very small components to start working with.  We'll keep feeding them those small bites over time until they have their complete process suite and their process improvement architecture and their methodology and everything they need will be implemented.  Sometimes this will take months.

During that time, you get these things in small, right-sized pieces, so that you can understand them, can put them in context.  Then you can start to embrace them and use them successfully.  That's what agileCMMI is all about, and that's why I would say it is the best process strategy we've used.  It's how we learn. 

Today's five minutes with the CMMI Appraiser is up.  Please check back soon for the Second Question: What was the genesis of the agileCMMI methodology? 

And don’t miss our next "CMMI: On Location" professional development experience. The CMMI Appraiser is on location in Washington DC on the topic of agileResiliency and using CMMI to make agile stronger at AgileDC conference on October 23rd.

Click it for a ticket, and 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 program.