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Written by experienced process improvement professionals who have developed and implemented systems in organizations around the world, Interpreting the CMMI: A Process Improvement Approach provides you with specific techniques for performing process improvement using the CMMI and the family of CMMI models. Kulpa and Johnson describe the fundamental concepts of the CMMI model ”goals, practices, architecture, and definitions ”in everyday language, give real-world examples, and provide a structured approach for implementing the concepts of the CMMI into any organization. They walk you through the myriad charts and graphs involved in statistical process control and offer recommendations.

The authors distill the knowledge gained in their combined 60 years of experience in project management, software engineering, systems engineering, metrics, quality assurance, configuration management, training, documentation, process improvement, and team building. Whether you are new to process improvement or an experienced professional, Interpreting the CMMI: A Process Improvement Approach saves you time wasted on false starts, false promises by marketers, and failed deadlines.

FEATURES

• Presents the pros and cons of attempting process improvement and implementing CMMI
• Guides you through a proven approach for designing the process improvement effort, for monitoring and controlling the effort, and measuring its success
• Offers advice for implementing several process improvement projects simultaneously to avoid added costs and missteps
• Discusses older methods of assessing organizations and compares them to the new SCAMPI method

About the Authors

Margaret Kulpa is the Chief Operating Officer of AgileDigm, Incorporated. As such, she provides senior-level management support for SEI initiatives and software process improvement. She has over 30 years of consulting experience, and experience in all phases of the system development life cycle, focusing on management, coding, quality assurance and testing, training, database design and analysis, technical writing and editing, business process reengineering (BPR), and electronic data processing (EDP) auditing. Ms. Kulpa was a featured speaker in the cutting-edge category at the 2002 Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG) annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Her presentation, entitled CMMI ”Not for the Little Guy? discussed the advantages and disadvantages of small organizations thinking about transitioning to the CMMI from the CMM.

Kent A. Johnson is the Director of Systems Engineering for TeraQuest, and an authorized CMMI instructor. His background includes over 25 years of experience in the development of complex software- intensive systems. He provides training, consulting, and assessments for clients working to improve their systems and software development capabilities. Internationally, he has helped clients in nine countries improve their systems and software processes. Mr Johnson presents tutorials on systems and software engineering, process improvement, and development methodologies at international conferences. He is a past Chairman, International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), Systems Architecture Working Group.