Assessment View versus Improvement View


It is often the case while working with organizations that we encounter two distinctly different views on how to use the CMMI. We call these views:

  1. The assessment view

  2. The process improvement view

The assessment view is more focused on what is the minimum required to satisfy the model and what is needed to pass the test (assessment or evaluation or SCAMPI). The process improvement view is more focused on what is best for your organization and what is needed to improve the organization.

An example of how these different views would address a CMMI practice can be seen in the area of how an organization would objectively evaluate adherence to the plans, processes, procedures, and methods within a process area.

Taking an assessment view, an organization might decide to have developers and engineers perform a review of each other's work. This approach looks like a quick way to get independent verification until you realize that these developers and engineers will still need to be trained in evaluation and will need additional budget and schedule to perform the evaluations. A dysfunctional assessment view might go as far as having one person reviewing all of a large program or project (clearly an overwhelming job for just one person) to get the checkmark during an assessment.

Taking a process improvement view, an organization would realize the need for clear responsibility defined for quality- related activities. Establishing an independent quality group staffed with trained and experienced professionals would go a long way toward ensuring that the organization continues to perform the processes as written. This group would need to be staffed at a sufficient level to be effective. In many cases, this means three to five percent of the technical staff, or more.

We have worked with many organizations, and our experience tells us that organizations that focus only on an assessment view will fail. They fail to truly satisfy the model, primarily because of the lack of institutionalization, but will also fail to provide any real business value to their organization in return for the expense.

Those organizations taking the process improvement view will succeed in providing business value and will also do much better in an assessment yes, sometimes this requires hard work but this is the only truly successful path that we have seen. Therefore, this book will most often take the process improvement view.




Interpreting the CMMI(c) A Process Improvement Approach
Interpreting the CMMI (R): A Process Improvement Approach, Second Edition
ISBN: 142006052X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 205

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