GOALS FOR THIS BOOK

This book is written to provide you with some very specific, practical knowledge about implementing CMMI-based process improvement in your organization. The knowledge you can expect to gain includes:

A thorough debunking of any beliefs or thoughts you might have had that organizations which don t use CMMI or haven t been appraised at a CMMI maturity level are in chaos, not doing anything right, and are condemned to fail.

An understanding that if the principles and practices of project management work for software and systems projects, they ll also work for process improvement projects.

Unconventional, yet highly effective methods for accomplishing the activities that usually bog down every CMMI effort: defining, developing, piloting, and implementing the process assets.

Insight into some different ways of looking at CMMI-based process improvement that may give you your own breakthrough thoughts on how to positively effect this type of change in your organization. Some fresh approaches to some of the most difficult areas of CMMI-based process improvement: designing and defining processes and process assets.

A special chapter just for executives and senior managers from which they can learn explicit techniques to implement and become effective leaders and sponsors of process improvement. Questions, criteria, and other aspects of critical thinking your organization should employ when considering acquiring outside CMMI or process expertise or purchasing a tool or system to be used to enable process implementation.

An understanding of the myths that pervade CMMI-based process improvement, the dangers of myths, and how to separate fact from fiction .

So, for those of you who have a penchant for quality assurance, please use the above for goals to build your checklist and then see if this book passes your audit!

What This Book Will Do for You

Specifically, what you will get from using the contents of this book is sound, proven, practical advice on how to use CMMI (and other tools) to improve your organization s software and systems development and delivery processes. You will be able to immediately apply the concepts and put the practices into operation in your organization. The results of your work will not be a surprise; you will be able to measurably demonstrate real improvement in your organization.

What This Book Will Not Do for You

There are a few things this book will not help you with. If you ve already bought the book and want to do any of the following, Amazon.com will help you sell it as used so you can recover some of your cost. This book will not:

Give you anything that guarantees your organization will achieve a maturity level, because no one or nothing can deliver on that promise. However, there are plenty of people out there who will happily relieve you of your money if you believe this.

Give you only one way to implement engineering and management practices consistent with CMMI, because there are an infinite number of ways to do this. It will give you several ways to accomplish your goals, which have proven successful in other organizations. Give you an inexpensive, fast-track approach to improving process capability or organizational maturity. No matter what anyone says, this stuff is hard and expensive. This book will give you approaches that are less painful and less expensive.