Rewards and Punishment

Summary

This chapter has described our perspectives and recommendations on high maturity. The high-maturity approaches described here take time and effort. We have seen the significant success that some organizations have experience with these approaches. We have also seen organizations attempt high-maturity behavior too soon before defining a solid set of organizational processes and working through the change management issues of Level 3. Those organizations have not been successful.

This chapter described both organizational- and project-level high-maturity activities. We have a special word of caution here: be careful that, in your organization, you do not build a wall between the projects and the organization. We have seen some companies where there is such a strong "we they" approach to quantitative management that it has become dysfunctional . The projects point to the organizational group building the baselines and models and say it is their fault we cannot do QM because they have not given us what we need. And the organizational group points to the projects and says it is their fault because we do not have clean data. Do not let this happen in your organization. Work from the beginning to establish organizationwide cooperation.

Transitioning to high maturity can be overwhelming. When in doubt, an organization should hire outside, expert help. This assistance is offered in the form of classes, mentoring, supervising data collection and reviews, and building models. Of course, as consultants, we support this approach. However, some organizations are loathe to hire consultants . The most important thing to remember about hiring consultants is that you can always fire consultants if you are not happy with them. So if you need help, get it.