The CMMI Appraisal Waiting Game

In my discussions with software managers and practitioners I often hear, “We’re just getting started with process improvement; or, we’re not ready for the CMMI yet; or, we don’t need an appraisal to know we’re at level 1.” These are all valid issues; however, there are several reasons to consider having an appraisal early on in the process improvement effort:

• Being aware of weaknesses within the organization isn’t always enough to start generating corrective action,
• Just knowing the “score” for your organization is not enough to effectively direct the process improvement efforts at the highest priority problems, and
• The organization, although staffed with experienced and skilled people, may not have sufficiently detailed knowledge of the model to effectively interpret and use it. 

It’s not coincidental that a CMMI based process improvement effort is often referred to as a journey. To make an effective start on the road to process improvement it’s essential to know several things:

• Where you’re starting from,
• Where you’re heading to,
• How great a distance is to be traveled,
• How much time the journey should take,
• What useful things might be discovered along the way, and
• What route to take?

An up front look at the current state of the organization can help you create a map for the upcoming journey. The first step in creating your map is through a relatively quick and informal appraisal of the organization level and project level processes, activities and deliverables.

An informal appraisal provides much more than just a score; it’s an effective diagnostic and intervention tool for taking the process pulse of the organization. The major benefits of an informal appraisal are to:

• Support, enable and encourage an organization wide commitment to the software process improvement effort,
• Initiate a collaborative effort among the members of a group who may not have an opportunity to work closely together before. This is NOT something being done TO anyone, it is being done BY us FOR us,
• Develop an accurate consensus opinion as to the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s processes and process adherence (What our processes tell us to do, what we say we do, what we can prove we do) all with respect to a reference model, the CMMI, and
• Create a public demonstration of commitment by upper management, and show the depth of awareness of the problems by the members of the organization. 

In my experience as both an internal and external process improvement team member, it takes an external catalyst to reach a broad enough segment of the organization to attain critical mass and create a self-sustaining effort.

Why can’t we just knuckle down, charge harder, or put our noses to the grindstone, just like we’ve always done in the past?

We could, but we’d still just be doing the same things in the same ways all over again.

As an example, NO project manager in recorded history has EVER said, “Hmmmm, I think I’ll just repeat all the mistakes of my predecessors, that’s the ticket!!” Statistics abound, but essentially, software projects are late, exceed the budget and fail to meet all of the customer’s expectations.

If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.  I vote for trying something new.