Cmmi Implementation Guide

CMMI Implementation Guide

A Practitioner’s Perspective

Smashwords Edition

Copyright2013 Vishnuvarthanan Moorthy

This CMMI Implementation Guide is a reference book for anyone interested in implementing CMMI in their organization. The purpose of this book is, to provide insight in to CMMI Implementation phases and best practices to be followed in this journey. Most of us agree, that CMMI is more a De facto model that IT Industry follows and other industries also has shown lot of interest in adopting this model. The day to day popularity and its adoption rate is on the surge for CMMI. In this scenario, this book will help the new organizations and implementers, on how to approach CMMI Implementation practically in their organization. This book is not a replacement to the Model or to the resources which CMMI Institute Publishes. This is only an additional resource which user can benefit from.

CMMI Institute holds the complete authority and rights to CMMI model and all the components within the framework. This book is prepared based on the experience of a practitioner on implementing the model in various organizations. The Author has worked in multiple roles in CMMI Implementation and has global exposure in implementing the model. We reiterate that for all the model related details and updates, please visit CMMI Institute website and contact CMMI Institute team for any clarifications.

This book is intent to give you guidance on how to approach CMMI Implementation in your organization from initiation, planning, execution, appraisal and sustenance. This book gives various practical approaches followed by organizations as typical examples. Implementation of CMMI is not an activity for marketing and bidding, it’s more than that, its strengthening of your product development & Service delivery models to achieve your business results. Considering this you would want CMMI Implementation to bring in the real cultural change and value to your business. This book provides you information which is useful for deciding, planning and implementing CMMI in Successful way.

Be clear, there are many ways to implement CMMI and its practices. Having a better consultant or Engaging a CMMI Institute Partner in your Journey is always helpful in removing the barriers at right time, however in this book we are giving the details, which one should be aware of in this journey to better utilize the resources and control the program.

This book is suggested for senior management people, process quality assurance people, delivery people and anyone interested to know about CMMI Implementation. Understanding on the topics given in this book will help them to strategize for successful CMMI Implementation.

Contents

Introduction to CMMI

Initiating CMMI Implementation

Planning CMMI Implementation

Executing CMMI Implementation

Appraising CMMI Implementation

Sustaining CMMI Implementation

CMMI High Maturity Implementation

Miscellaneous

References

Introduction to CMMI

CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) is a Process Improvement Model, which has collection of Industry best practices to implement in Organizations to achieve process capability and maturity. CMMI is a proven approach to achieve better performance results. CMMI is more of a framework which contains the model, trainings and appraisal components which helps an organization to implement the model in successful way to get benefit out of it. CMMI over the years has shown lot of success considering organizations are getting dramatic improvements in effectiveness, efficiency and quality.

Software Engineering Institute in Carnegie Melon University has developed this model initially. The CMMI Model Evolution is given below,

*Source – CMMI Institute Site

In the year 2012 -2013 the CMMI Model and related components have been transitioned to the newly formed CMMI Institute for better management and results. For further details, please refer CMMI Institute site and/or contact Customer relations of CMMI Institute.

The current version of CMMI is Version 1.3 and it got released in year 2010 and related appraisal version SCAMPI v1.3 also available. The model can be downloaded for free in CMMI Institute site. CMMI has three different Constellations in its product suite. As definition a constellation is subset of CMMI product suite relevant to improvement in a particular area of interest. The constellations are CMMI for Development, CMMI for Services and CMMI for Acquisition.

CMMI for Development - Addresses guidance on product/System development/Engineering

CMMI for Services - Addresses guidance on delivering services to internal and external entities

CMMI for Acquisition – Addresses supply chain management, acquisition and outsourcing processes in government and in Industry.

These CMMI Constellations are having set of Process Areas designed to achieve results in that area. However there are 16 common process areas between all the three models. The other process areas are specific to that constellation. In this book, we are limiting ourselves with CMMI Dev (CMMI for Development) and CMMI SVC (CMMI for Services). In CMMI Dev we have 6 specific Process Areas and in CMMI SVC we have 7+1 Specific Process Areas. The CMMI Dev consists in total 22 Process Areas and CMMI Svc consists in total 23(+ Service System Development) Process Areas.

Process Area is a cluster of related practices to achieve certain results. Process Areas are organized in terms of Goals and each Goal consists of set of practices, which would help to achieve the goals. An Example: Configuration related practices to be performed in product development or in Service Delivery are collected and established under one process area called Configuration Management. Risk identification and handling practices are established under Risk Management process area.

CMMI consists of two representations, Staged Representation and Continuous Representation. Staged Representation is adopted by most of the organizations as its giving them guidance and benchmarking with other Organizations, Whereas continuous representation is adopted by Organizations which are clear in their area of improvement and are comfortable with the practices in all other areas (or comfortable with the level of performance).In Staged Representation, Organization’s Maturity level is provided with 5 different process maturities. In Continuous Representation, Each process Areas’ capability levels are presented with 6 levels. A representation in CMMI is analogous to a view into a dataset provided by a database. Both representations provide ways of implementing process improvement to achieve business goals. Both representations provide the same technical content, but organized into different ways.

In this guide, we will concentrate on the Staged Representation based on Maturity Level. A Maturity Level is a well-defined evolutionary plateau on the path to becoming a mature organization. Each level provides foundation to the next Maturity level. Each Maturity level Consists of set of process areas to be implemented. There are five maturity levels in CMMI Staged representation.

*source – CMMI Model

Each Process Area consists of Goals. Goals are further aligned with related practices and a goal indicates combined achievement of practices under it. There are two types of Goals,

Specific Goals: Implementation Specific to that Area of Interest is the target

Generic Goals: Institutionalization of the process area is the target

Each Goal consists of set of Practices to be performed. A Practice indicates the related tasks to be performed. There are two types of practices,

Specific practices: Specific and unique itself. Information differs from level to level

Generic practices: Common practices across all process areas with a similar grouping

In addition to this there are sub practices, notes and sample work products. They help us to understand the intent of the model components and implement it better.

Further details on architecture and understanding on Goals and practices, please refer to the CMMI model (The model is a registered copyrighted product of CMMI Institute).