This presentation discusses easy but important steps leading to a successful CMMI high maturity assessment.

1. Easy Steps to CMMI L5 Sucess
Dipen Vadodaria
+91-9820593288
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2. Introduction
Unlike CMMI Level 3, CMMI high maturity assessment though much more exciting, can be a long
and frustrating exercise. The requirement of testing hypothesis for improvements can be
frustrating and can lead to a lot of rework if right metrics, factors, and objectives are not picked in
the beginning .
We have listed down a few easy steps and precautions that you can take that will surely save you
a lot of rework and heartburn in the later stages.
This presentation does not discuss topics such as specific practices, model requirements, building
of PPMs. There is a lot of trainings and material available online and offline to help you with it.
This presentation is based on our experience with CMMI high maturity implementations. It briefly
lists down the critical steps (rarely discussed elsewhere) that you must take early on to achieve
success.
At the end of this presentation, we hope that will know enough of what is required to start it on
the right step.
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3. Steps to Sucess - Vendor Selection
Spend extra time: Many times it makes sense for organizations to hire experienced
vendor to help them with their high maturity journey. If you have decided to do so,
ensure that you spend extra time to select vendor.
You will need a vendor who does not show you only his standard way of
implementation but also customizes his way of doing to fit the requirements of your
organizations. Not all organizations are the same and not all of them execute the same
kind of projects.
This is a very important step and has a very high impact on the outcome of this
exercise as well as sustenance of high maturity practices in your organization.
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4. Steps to Success – DMAIC cycle
• DMAIC Cycle: Treat this as an organization wide six sigma project with its
own DMAIC cycle. Ask your consultant to explain the whole of high
maturity cycle at the start of the project so there are very few surprises
afterwards. Ensure that management is also part of this basic model
understanding training.
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5. Steps to Sucess - Project Management
• Build a Core team early in the project: Build a team of members who are able to dedicate significant effort
for 18 months to this effort. It is a good idea if the members have prior experience in software life cycle
development as practioners. Do not build a team of only Quality Assurance staff.
• Choose the right leader: Select a leader who has spent many years in software development. He should be
a person with aptitute for quantitative analysis.
• Let it take its own time: This can be a tiresome and long exercise as you are required to show multiple
cycles of improvement in objectives. You will have consultants telling you it can be done in less than 18
months. They are just teilling you to get your business and in reality it is highly improbable. You must set
the right expectations early on.
• Keep going: You will face a lot of challenges, ups and downs as you discover new things and often find
your process performance have not improved after several efforts and you have wasted your time. This is a
very common situation and you will get over it. You just have to keep going.
• Meet often: The team must meet often to discuss roadbocks, issues, finding, and future course of action.
Based on your finding, a lot of time you will have change your strategies quickly to avoid delays and loss of
efforts. An ideal frequency should be no longer than a week between meetings.
• Create small milestones and celerate wins: You will fail more often than sucessed. It can be demotivating
and discouraging. So, create small miletones and celebrate wins to keep it going.
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6. Steps to Sucess – Select the right stuff
• Process Performance Objectives: Select the objectives that you think have a scope for vast improvement and not
something that sounds nice. You will be required to show improvements in the objectives during the appraisal. It
would be unfortunate to realize after nine months of efforts that the objectives you have selected are not
improving. For example, do not select schedule variance for improvement if your projects have very little scope for
improvement in schedule.
• Data Collection: Start collecting all kind of process and product data as soon as you have decided to go for high
maturity process implementation. You will need a lot of data for a lot of different measurements, factors, defects
etc to be able to build meanigful predication models.
• Pick the right projects: Since you are also required to show improvements within projects, pick projects which
provide within project improvement opportunties and are likely to run long enough for you to be able to show
multiple cycles of improvements.
• Identify innovations early: You will be required to implement process innovations that improve performance of
your objectives. Select and pilot them early so that if they do not work you have enough time to look at other
options.
• Indetify factors that can be controlled: While building predication models do not identify controls that seem to fit
the model better but cannot be controlled in your organization. There are certain factors that can be controled in
one organization but may not be able to control in other. Building and implementing PPM takes a lot of effort, late
realization of having a PPM that does not have controllable parameters will have very big impact on your exercise.
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7. Steps to Sucess – Training
You can never over train your team
• Train the core team: Train the core team in six sigma and statistical project management techniques as
soon as you have decided to go for it. You would think that engineers would be good with numbers but
that is not the case. You will find most struggle in the beginning with statistics. It is better to have
minimum 1 six sigma black belt per 100 person. Ensure key team members are green belts.
• Train the entire project staff: Train every member of all project teams in basic statistics and importance of
entering correct data for measurements.
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8. Thank You
Dipen Vadodaria (+91-9820593288)
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