“Maturity Models Have It Backwards http://amplify.com/u/qy0“

I’m not quite sure how you connect the superstars who make things happen with the wounded princes who feel threatened by change. Regardless, thanks for the link to the article. I love it when someone (in any context) appreciates that people trump process (and mergers)!

CMMI is compatible to ISO9000-2000. ISO9000-2000 is the certification for meeting international standard in quality management by an enterprise. CMMI defines the best practices, at each level, for enterprise processes. When a company is certified at level 5 of CMMI, many large organizations (e.g. US Department of Defence – the largest purchaser of technologies, services, and products in the world) accept the bids from that company immediately, without reference check, if the prices are right.

By the way, Systems Engineering is the discipline that oversees all activities carrying out by other professional disciplines (IT and Software Engineering included) over the product life cycle of every product from inception to disposal. US Air Force was the original sponsor of CMM and CMMI. The Defence and Aerospace industries are now also active stakeholders of CMMI, but US DoD remains the key stakeholder. A representative from US DoD signs every release of CMMI. The prime reason for having CMM and CMMI is that many products and systems are software intensive. US DoD wants its suppliers not only ISO9000-2000 certified but also at least CMMI Level 3 and EVMS certified! EVMS (Earned Value Management System), an international project management standard for reporting and measuring project progress, is one of the quantitative managed processes in Project Management. There is a signed agreement between US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand on EVMS standard. When a company gets EVMS certified in one country, other countries recognize the certification.

The attempt in matching the levels in CMMI against RMM is an interesting academic exercise, but it compares apples and oranges. Moreover, Requirements Management is one set of processes within CMMI!

Doing the job is most important, getting better at doing it is secondary.

Most of the people I’ve worked with are either overly focused on tactical execution, and fail to catch the ball, or they are rabidly intent on catching the ball, and then they get tackled immediately. The first group never scores, the second group scores less frequently.

CMMI can be used most effectively as a means to provide benchmarking of internal improvements, it shouldn’t be the driver of change. Achieving a particular CMMI level is not valuable. Having a process that would be measured at a CMMI level is valuable.

Thanks!

“The paradox of the CMM is that process improvement is good, but process improvement programs aren’t, or at least they often aren’t.”

“When process improvement (as in ‘Level 3 by the end of the year!’) becomes the goal, the scary projects get put onto the back burner. It’s those scary projects, unfortunately, that are probably the ones most worth doing.”

“Organizations become more and more averse to risk as they ‘mature’. An organization under the gun to demonstrate increased CMM level is not going to go looking for a real challenge.”

“The projects most worth doing are the ones that will move you DOWN one full level on your process scale.”

And finally:

“Identifying an ideal practice, or at least a candidate ideal practice, is a useful endeavor. But the programs that mandate such a practice are something else entirely.”