3.1.1 Understand Your Business

Here are few questions which could help you understand your business needs and move you towards the CMMI implementation:

• What products or services are offered by your organization?

• How many business units do you have, and do all of them produce the same or similar products/services?

• Have you identified key business units for you to succeed?

• Is there any scope for improvement? And which part of the business process do you want to improve?

• What is the current cycle time of your services or products?

• What is the current resource competency that you have?

• Are your clients expecting certain maturity in some processes?

Whenever you want to bring a vast change into your business process, or you want to introduce new process, it will always take some time as most people will have differences of opinion on how to proceed. Hence, an internal discussion within management and key decision makers about what CMMI is—and what kinds of benefits can be expected from implementing the model—will help reduce anxiety in the minds of stakeholders.

To start an implementation, organization and implementation teams can initially focus on one business unit and slowly move on to other business units. This is the option for those organizations that are not yet ready to cover the whole organization, and would prefer to start with one business unit at a time. This makes sense in a way because to include new process changes requires time and involvement; organizations see this is as a big challenge to implement while simultaneously delivering projects to their clients as part of running the business.

3.1.2 Engage CMMI Institute Partner

With the help of CMMI institute web site, you can easily find provider within your region. To search a provider, go to http://partners.cmmiinstitute.com/find-partner-organization/ .

Next, select your partner of choice from the list or use the advanced search option to select the product suite, and then to select the geographic location for your search. Figure 3-1 shows the search screen from CMMI Institute web site.

Figure 3-1. The search screen to find a provider

You should discuss the following points with the consulting partner (these points must also be understood by the subject matter expert team members):

• The current version of CMMI model

• Implementation steps

• Experience in similar implementations

• Goals and objectives to be achieved

• Resource requirements (e.g., human, infrastructure, and training requirements)

• The right constellation to be adopted

• You need to discuss how long it typically takes to

• You also need to discuss how long it typically takes to implement the CMMI model in an organization like yours, as well as the maturity level you should target.

3.1.3 Choosing the Right Constellation

Choosing a constellation for implementing CMMI is important; choosing the right one for the business to benefit is more even important. (We have already covered constellations in Chapter 2). It’s also possible to take the advice of our consulting partner for choosing the right constellation. We also recommend examining a few factors when choosing a constellation:

• The business model in the organization

• The product delivery cycle time

• The complexities involved in product development

• Areas where more improvement is required

There could be additional factors that influence your decision. However, the best practice says that, when you have smaller cycle times with less intensive engineering needs to deliver the product or services, then it is recommended that you go for CMMI Services. However, if your business model delivers both product development and services (i.e., maintenance, migration, testing, etc.), then it is recommended that you go with combined CMMI Dev and CMMI Svc Constellations to implement the best from both. Please discuss these options your CMMI Partner.

However, if you are delivering projects with durations ranging from shorter (three to nine months) or longer projects (more than nine months), and it is expected that you maintain good process delivery practices, then it is recommended that you implement the CMMI Dev model.

3.1.4 Engaging a CMMI Institute Partner or Service Provider

We have already discussed that you need to engage a CMMI Institute partner (i.e., CMMI Institute Certified Individuals or consulting services provider) for performing the following:

• Official CMMI training

• Consulting/guidance in CMMI implementation

• Appraisal activity

CMMI implementation guidance can be carried out by SMEs available within the organization or a consulting partner hired from outside the organization; no certification is required for the SMEs to provide guidance or consultancy for any organization.

It is only if you want to achieve a maturity level rating for your organization processes that it becomes mandatory to use a CMMI Institute certified lead appraiser for performing the appraisal.

Lead appraiser services can be acquired through a CMMI Institute Partner. It is always a best practice to engage a lead appraiser early in your implementation if you have plan for CMMI Implementation with appraisal; doing so will help ensure the lead appraiser’s availability for the month in which your organization has decided to conduct CMMI appraisal. (A lead appraiser can perform only two appraisals in a month).

Selection of a Lead Appraiser is very important, and you must consider or list a few points before selecting a lead appraiser for your maturity ratings:

• Consider the overall experience of a lead appraiser

• Check the lead appraiser’s credibility in the IT industry

• Investigate past experience in conducting CMMI appraisals for organizations similar to your own

• Be sure to check the lead appraiser CMMI appraisal calendar, as sometimes you may not get lead appraiser dates for the month in which your organization is planning to conduct the final appraisal. There is a cap of two appraisals per month, so it is important to understand whether the lead appraiser is available for your desired timeframe.

These are also some of the generic points to consider before engaging any lead appraiser.

If an organization is only focusing on implementation of CMMI—and it neither wants to conduct an appraisal nor is looking for a process rating in the near future—then the services of a CMMI partner or lead appraiser won’t especially be needed.

3.3.1 CMMI Program/Project Manager

As the name suggests, a CMMI program/project manager is responsible for monitoring and controlling the CMMI journey in your organization. Note that it is not mandatory to have full time person for this role. Any senior person within the organization can be dedicated or partially allocated for this role. Here are a few of this person’s responsibilities:

• CMMI program planning and monitoring

• Manages stakeholders’ commitment

• Status reporting to senior management

• Participates in SEPG meetings

• Helps in achieving plans

• Performs risk management

Looking at these responsibilities, you can see the similarities to the way a program manager manages products or services.

3.3.2 Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG)

A software engineering process group is a group of subject matter experts (SMEs) from an engineering or management background, along with process quality assurance members from within an organization. This group will be responsible for owning and running software process improvement activities.

A few of the SMEs can work as permanent members of the group, and others can work on an as needed basis. Here are some of the responsibilities played by the SEPG, which is sometimes called an Engineering Process Group (EPG) :

• Ensures that relevant processes are defined and aligned with business objectives to support the delivery of product or services

• Ensures that process assets are revised and maintained on a regular basis, based on identified improvements

• Reviews and approves process tailoring

• Ensures that processes are appraised from time-to-time, in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current processes

If your organization aims to implement and achieve maturity level 4 and maturity level 5, then organizational performance management (OPM) also will be owned by SEPG.

3.3.3 PQA or SQA Group

A process quality assurance (PQA) or software quality assurance (SQA) group consists of people who have good knowledge of the process quality assurance or the software quality assurance.

The typical responsibilities of this group include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Project reviews/audits

• Deliver process trainings

• Product and process quality reviews

• Process compliance checks

• Project metrics collation and analysis

• Providing relevant process improvement updates to SEPG

3.3.4 Metrics Analyst Group

The metrics analyst group is a subgroup of the SEPG group. These are SMEs who collect and analyze/understand project metrics data. The analysis of project metrics data needs to be meaningful for the project and organization to use it for informed decision making.

This group generally does not exist in most of organizations, and some organizations combine their project management office with metrics group.

Typical responsibilities of the metrics analyst group include the following:

• Metrics data collection from projects on a monthly basis

• Perform metrics analysis

• Use analysis to identify and baseline new metrics

3.3.5 Training Group

The training group in an organization can work as the separate/independent group, or it can work in combination with the Human Resource (HR) group. This group’s main role is to do the following:

• Identify the training needs in the organization

• Plan and conduct Trainings

• Assess training effectiveness

• Improve the training delivery process

So far, we’ve covered the composition of teams and their formation with a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. Now it’s to schedule the CMMI Implementation activities.

If you think from the perspective of a program manager or project manager, you know the value of effort estimation. Each task involved in the program should be estimated, and you should be able to schedule activities that fit within your target.

Hence, you need to be clear that it is not only a project for your organization, but that it is also for cultural change within your organization, which may take some time to show the results.

If you or senior management decides to implement CMMI practices within your organization, then please do check and assess whether you have sufficient time available to achieve the target.

3.4.1 Process Gap Analysis

By definition, gap analysis is the process of comparing the actual performance with the potential or desired performance. Gap analysis is the formal study of what a business is currently doing and how its processes are defined and followed; and then determining whether these processes are helping the organization to reach the goals it wants to achieve in the future. Gap analysis can be done from different perspectives, such as resource availability, business processes, and information technology.

Performing gap analysis involves studying artifacts and interviewing or discussing these issues with the practitioners. These interviews are mostly conducted with the project manager and the program manager who are involved in the service/delivery of products/project.

3.4.2 How Gap Analysis Is Conducted

Let examine how gap analysis is conducted.

Gap analysis will be performed with the CMMI partner selected by you for CMMI implementation and appraisal services.

A CMMI partner cum external consultant will review the plan and meet the teams that we have discussed creating so far in this chapter.

It’s possible that certain teams won’t yet exist at the time of scheduling the process gap analysis (e.g., the SEPG group or Metrics Analyst Group might not exist yet), and this can be assumed to be part of the known gap. Obviously, interviewing non-existent teams during the gap analysis exercises is not possible.

During the gap analysis, the external consultant will interview people from the following existing teams:

• Project/Program delivery managers

• SEPG/Metrics Analyst Group

• SQA/Quality Group

• Training Group

The external consultant will also review the existing processes/artifacts:

• He will review processes for project management, engineering, and support

• He will review artifacts created as part of the project, such as the project plan, the requirement document, the design, and so on

The consultant’s basis for interviewing and reviewing processes/artifacts is the CMMI Dev model, including the following components in particular:

• Process areas

• Generic goals

• Generic practices

• Specific goals

• Specific practices

If any gap is noted/reported by the external consultant, it means that either one or more of the previously mentioned CMMI components are not satisfied.

This is where the GAP analysis is handy. You might be thinking about the current situation and the future state that you want your organization to reach, along with the task or tasks that need to be completed to close the gap.

While performing the gap analysis, a gap report (draft) is prepared for each process area. The draft report contains all the weakness within the organization. This draft is first presented to the management and key stakeholders. After their discussion, a final report will be prepared.

Figure 3-2 shows a sample gap report format with one process area: Project Planning (PP)

Figure 3-2. A sample gap report format

3.4.3 Plan and Close Identified/Reported Gaps

The next step is to analyze the gaps against the CMMI model, and then plan how to close the gaps within a timeline agreed upon by the management/key stakeholders. Note that this is also the time to plan or develop strategies for bringing the required cultural change to the organization. Cultural change is significant because, when closing the gaps, new paths and possibilities can emerge which we might have to adopt for the product and/or service delivery.

Based on the gaps reported, your organization can undertake the following steps:

• Determine the effort required to close all the reported gaps

• Assign individuals or teams to each gap to close

• Process gaps and update

• Update roles and responsibilities

• Target projects under CMMI implementation

• Update the organization’s structure

• Assess the training needs for the teams

Based on the established plan, your organization can also do the following:

• Define the business goals and objectives

• Decide CMMI representation

• Decide on the maturity level to be achieved (e.g., Level 2 or Level 3)

• Decide on the timeline to achieve the targeted maturity level, business performance, and so on

• Track the plan/timeline for closing the gaps, as well as to achieve the targeted maturity level

In terms of the CMMI implementation timeline, it is recommended that you be a little aggressive. One important point to note here is that you cannot skip any maturity level in between, which means you need to implement all the process areas belonging to a lower ML (maturity level). It is always recommended by the experts that you achieve ML3 before you move to ML4 and ML5.

Please remember that maturity level is not a rank, but rather the actual level of maturity for your organization. If we really want to benefit from CMMI Appraisal as an organization, then we need to perform at certain level with consistency. However, achieving a higher maturity level depends upon the organization’s strength and willingness to do so.