Which One Should I Use? | Interpreting the CMMI (R): A Process Improvement Approach, Second Edition

The Continuous Representation

The continuous representation has the same basic information as the staged representation, just arranged differently. The continuous representation focuses process improvement on actions to be completed within process areas, yet the processes and their actions can span different levels. More sophistication in implementing the practices is expected at the different levels. These levels are called Capability Levels. There are six Capability Levels:

Level 0: Incomplete
Level 1: Performed
Level 2: Managed
Level 3: Defined
Level 4: Quantitatively Managed
Level 5: Optimizing

What is a Capability Level? Capability Levels focus on maturing the organization's ability to perform, control, and improve its performance in a process area. This ability allows the organization to focus on specific areas to improve the performance of that area. A brief explanation of each Capability Level follows .

Capability Level 0: Incomplete

An incomplete process does not implement all of the Capability Level 1 specific and generic practices. This is tantamount to Maturity Level 1 in the staged representation.

Capability Level 1: Performed

A Capability Level 1 process is a process that is expected to perform all of the Capability Level 1 specific and generic practices. Performance may not be stable and may not meet specific objectives such as quality, cost, and schedule, but useful work can be done. This is only a start, or baby-step, in process improvement. It means that you are doing something but you cannot prove that it is really working for you.

Capability Level 2: Managed

A managed process is planned, performed, monitored , and controlled for individual projects, groups, or stand-alone processes to achieve a given purpose. Managing the process achieves both the model objectives for the process as well as other objectives, such as cost, schedule, and quality. As the title of this level indicates, you are actively managing the way things are done in your organization. You have some metrics that are consistently collected and applied to your management approach.

Remember: metrics are collected and used at all levels of the CMMI, in both the staged and continuous representations. It is a bitter fallacy to think that an organization can wait until Capability Level 4 to use the metrics.

Capability Level 3: Defined

A defined process is a managed process that is tailored from the organization's set of standard processes. Deviations beyond those allowed by the tailoring guidelines are documented, justified, reviewed, and approved. The organization's set of standard processes is just a fancy way of saying that your organization has an identity. That is, there is an organizational way of doing work that differs from the way another organization within your company may do it. So, suppose there are two companies developing anvils. Those two companies are Roadrunner Software Enterprises and Wily Coyote Industries. The people at Roadrunner Software Enterprises consistently beat the pants off Wily Coyote Industries when developing anvils. Why? Because Roadrunner Software Enterprises has a special way, specific to them, of developing anvils. It is documented and measured, people are trained in it, and the results are tracked.

Capability Level 4: Quantitatively Managed

A quantitatively managed process is a defined process that is controlled using statistical and other quantitative techniques. Product quality, service quality, process performance, and other business objectives are understood in statistical terms and are controlled throughout the life cycle. Yes, this is where such ideals as statistical process control come into being. However, the point to be made here is to keep it simple. Metrics do not have to be difficult to be useful. In fact, the opposite holds true. I do not want to have to grit my teeth and get a tension headache every time I think about collecting and analyzing the metrics collected in my organization. Make them meaningful and associate them with some problem you would like to conquer. For example, assume that your company makes personal computers (PCs) and ships them to customers. One day, you are sitting at your desk and receive a call from an irate customer. How did that call get to you? Who knows ” but it did. (This could be an opportunity in disguise.) The customer describes his tale of woe and ends by stating that the PC arrived at his house with the box intact and unopened, but the monitor was smashed to bits. Well, if this is your first phone call about it, you are busy, and this is not your job, you might ignore it. But if you start receiving five such calls every day, you might want to start counting the number of calls, analyzing where the problem was injected into the shipping process, instituting a new process for fixing this defect, and tracking the effectiveness of your process. Then, by analyzing the number of defects expected in prior months versus the actual number of defects this month, you can come up with a standard number of expected defects. When this number is exceeded, the process is broken and must be fixed. Also, you can work on reducing this number. That is "Quantitatively Managing."

Capability Level 5: Optimizing

An optimizing process is a quantitatively managed process that is improved, based on an understanding of the common causes of process variation inherent in the process. It focuses on continually improving process performance through both incremental and innovative improvements. Both the defined processes and the organization's set of standard processes are targets of improvement activities. Capability Level 4 focuses on establishing baselines, models, and measurements for process performance. Capability Level 5 focuses on studying performance results across the organization or entire enterprise, finding common causes of problems in how the work is done (the process[es] used), and fixing the problems in the process. The fix would include updating the process documentation and training involved where the errors were injected. Thus, the process may only be broken at the project level; or, it could be entirely broken and the process at the organizational level and all resultant levels may need to be repaired.

The continuous representation contains the same basic information as the staged model ” the information is just arranged differently. The information (process areas, goals, practices) is arranged in what we can call functional categories; that is, each process area is grouped by the functionality it performs . There are four types of process categories:

Process Management Processes
Project Management Processes
Engineering Processes
Support Processes

So, for example, in the continuous representation, the "Project Management Processes" category contains the following process areas in the following order:

Project Planning
Project Monitoring and Control
Supplier Agreement Management
Integrated Project Management
Risk Management
Integrated Teaming
Integrated Supplier Management
Quantitative Project Management

These process areas are all related in some way. They are categorized as Project Management Processes. Although an organization may select which processes to focus improvement efforts on when using the continuous representation, this representation seems to suggest that, if your organization needs help in improving its project management approach to product development, start with these process areas in this order.

The continuous representation does not overtly suggest a sequence to use for process improvement; however, a sequence is implied . In the list of Project Management Processes above, it would be ludicrous for an organization to attempt to institute Quantitative Project Management before successfully achieving the goals of the Project Planning Process area (as Quantitative Project Management is more sophisticated and more complex than Project Planning). If you review the order of the process areas in the list, you will surmise that the less sophisticated process areas are listed first, with the more sophisticated process areas following. For example, before you can focus on Project Monitoring and Control, Project Planning should be in place. It seems that the continuous representation is saying that Project Planning should be attempted first, followed much later by Risk Management, because Risk Management is more sophisticated (and probably more complicated to institute) than Project Planning. Also, without the basis of Project Planning, Risk Management could not be performed effectively.

A more subtle, less obvious subject that bears discussing is that of Generic Practices and how they relate to Process Areas, Maturity Levels, and Capability Levels. Process Areas at Maturity Level 2 in the staged representation include entire Process Areas for planning, managing changes, ensuring quality, and tracking progress. The Generic Practices for Capability Level 2 in the continuous representation also include statements for the same things ” planning, managing changes, ensuring quality, and tracking progress. Generic Practices are used to determine whether generic goals have been satisfied. Generic goals must be satisfied to achieve a level ” either a Capability Level or a Maturity Level. What this means is that, because an organization is expected to implement the Generic Practices, an organization using the continuous representation and selecting separate process areas to focus on, must in reality also satisfy the basic concepts of Maturity Level 2 in the staged representation. An example follows.

An organization may decide to use the continuous representation. This organization selects the Process Area of Technical Solution, and is seeking a Capability Level 2 for it. To achieve this Capability Level, all of the specific practices for Technical Solution are expected to be implemented, and all of the Generic Practices for this level are expected to be instituted. That means that activities surrounding planning, managing changes, ensuring quality, and tracking progress for Technical Solution must be addressed. To address these issues and institute the Generic Practices, the organization discovers that it must actually back up a bit and also focus on the Process Areas of Project Planning, Project Monitoring and Control, and Configuration Management. So, although it may appear that an organization can skip process areas when using the continuous representation, the actions of those process areas must be met.