THE MODEL AND THE REALITY


Here s an interesting thought that is more than academic: If you pick up CMMI and start reading it, if you go attend the Introduction to CMMI class, or if you are attending the SEPG Conference for the first time, either you or someone in your organization has already made the decision to use one of the CMMs to improve the organization s process capability or maturity. Whether that decision was made consciously or unconsciously (assumed), whether the decision was based on facts and rationale or not, whether anyone thinks the decision is right or wrong, the simple irrefutable fact remains that the subsequent actions indicate a decision was made.

Once that decision is made and once the organization starts going down the path of CMMI-based process improvement, the organization will encounter almost nothing in the literature or at conferences that give it reason to question that fundamental decision. Certainly there is nothing in CMMI itself that would give anyone in the organization a reason to challenge or question using CMMI or investing in process improvement at all. And why should it? If someone decided that the organization is going to base its process improvement on a book, it s not the book s obligation to provide counterarguments to that decision.

Most of us operate with the assumption that process improvement is inherently good for the organization. Many of us also accept that CMMI is a good model upon which process discipline and improvement can be based. This chapter does not challenge those assumptions, but it does challenge some of the conventional wisdom underlying some of the currently pervasive approaches to CMMI-based process improvement. The wrong time for an organization to find out that its thinking and decisions about process improvement were misguided is after it has spent millions of dollars. The right time to figure that out is now.




Real Process Improvement Using the CMMI
Real Process Improvement Using the CMMI
ISBN: 0849321093
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 110
Authors: Michael West

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