Archive for the ‘Process Improvement’ Category

CMMI Institute to Help Companies around the World Elevate Organizational Performance

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013

Delivers Process Improvement Frameworks with Proven Business Results

Entinex is a proud partner of the CMMI Institute. We have been using CMMI and its predecessors to help elevate performance for over 16 years and have seen the value of the models to deliver measurable business results for our clients. We look forward to working with the CMMI Institute to extend the reach of the CMMI frameworks to enable individuals and organizations to reach their goals.

Our Founder, CEO, and Performance Jedi, Hillel Glazer continues to be the pathfinder for bringing CMMI, lean and agile practices together. He furthers his involvement by playing a critical role in helping the CMMI Institute formulate its strategies and carry out several important projects, including providing important input to the success of their SEPG conferences and foundational material for CMMI’s product suite in the agile market.

(Also, see this article on CMMI in SD Times.)

November 20, 2013 09:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
PITTSBURGH–The CMMI Institute announced today its strategy to extend the reach of the CMMI model to enable businesses of every size in every industry to elevate performance and to provide tools that equip CMMI practitioners to begin and to grow their journey with CMMI.

The CMMI Institute, established by Carnegie Mellon University, is home to the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), a gold standard of excellence in software and systems development. The Institute will continue to help this market to solve business problems while advancing the use of the model to new industry sectors around the world.

CMMI is used by some of the world’s most admired and innovative organizations, including Samsung, Accenture, Proctor & Gamble, and Siemens. CMMI adoption has been a powerful differentiator for businesses and a catalyst for economic growth in regions that invest in its broad adoption.

“To compete in the global market, leaders must build organizations that can consistently deliver quality and value in products and services,” said Kirk Botula, CEO of CMMI Institute. “The CMMI Institute enables organizations committed to excellence to achieve measurable results in the facets of their business that matter most to their goals. CMMI provides a framework of practices that can help organizations to identify and address key challenges to improve performance and the bottom line. We all know work is not the way it is supposed to be—CMMI helps make it better.”

The CMMI model was developed at Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) through collaboration of government, industry, and academia to help the Department of Defense and its contractors like Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing improve their software engineering capabilities. Widely trusted as a mark of reliability, many organizations require CMMI adoption as a pre-requisite for bidding on contracts.

Thousands of companies across multiple industry sectors in 94 countries have adopted its practices to elevate performance and have been appraised for capability and maturity using CMMI methods. The CMMI product suite includes product development, service delivery, procurement, and staff management—making it a worthwhile investment for any business. Carnegie Mellon University founded the CMMI Institute in order extend the benefits of CMMI beyond software and systems engineering to any product or service company regardless of size or industry.

KK Raman, Partner Business Excellence, KPMG India says, "Carnegie Mellon is a pioneer in developing best practices and transitioning them to industry, and this is reflected in the global adoption of the CMMI. KPMG is one of the premier organizations around the world with over a decade long partnership with CMU. We help use the CMMI Institute product suite—frameworks, training, certifications, and appraisal methods—to achieve organizational goals by enhancing processes."

Extending the Benefits of CMMI

The global adoption of CMMI is supported through a vast network of partners who guide organizations in the successful adoption of the CMMI models. As part of today’s news, CMMI Institute is advancing the practice of CMMI with an online self-assessment tool as well as new professional credentials for practitioners.

  • CMMI Self-Assessment Tool: A new online tool that allows organizations to begin their journey of elevating performance as well as to diagnose their existing implementation by assessing the current state of their organization. By answering a brief set of questions, users will gain critical insights that provide an analysis of an organization’s strengths and weaknesses as well as solutions to improve the capability of their organization.
  • CMMI Associate and CMMI Professional Certification: The CMMI Institute will be offering certifications to help individuals translate their experience with CMMI into professional development opportunities. CMMI Associate and CMMI Professional Certifications will provide confirmation of an individual’s knowledge of basic and advanced concepts in CMMI and demonstrate to current and prospective employers they are dedicated to excellence and have valuable skills to help elevate organizational performance.

"As a professional who uses CMMI daily in my work, I am committed to advancing my understanding of the models and to helping my clients and my organization position themselves to successfully meet their goals. The practitioner credentials will not only provide a clear path for my growth, it will also help me to communicate and validate my skills to my clients as well as my organization," said Capri Dye of Hubbert Systems Consulting, Inc.

The CMMI Self-Assessment Tool and Practitioner Certifications will be available in early 2014.

About CMMI Institute

The CMMI Institute, a subsidiary of Carnegie Mellon University, is dedicated to elevating organizational performance through best-in-class solutions to real-world challenges. The Institute is the home of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) for Development, Services, and Acquisition; and the People Capability Maturity Model which are process improvement models that create high-performance, high-maturity cultures. The models are used in thousands of organizations worldwide to deliver business results that serve as differentiators in the global market.

About Entinex

Entinex, Inc. is an aerospace engineering firm bringing the same skills and critical thinking used every day in aerospace to solve complex business problems. The creative, technical, and audacious characteristics of aerospace are leveraged to create elegant, inspiring, and break-through solutions to real business challenges to companies throughout the world in many fields and industries. The company’s approaches see through hairy, complex business problems with x-ray-vision-like clarity and accuracy and designs, explains and implements solutions with amazingly powerful yet easy-to-apply simplicity.

Posted in Business Benefit, CMMI, Culture of Excellence, Engineering, Executives, Getting Started, High Performance, Improvement, Leadership, Performance, Process Improvement, Productivity, business case, competitiveness, strategy, value | Comments Off

CMMI On One Leg

Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

I’m not sure, but I’m told some famous guy back in Biblical liturgy was once asked to explain the point of the Pentateuch (aka, the Torah, aka, The Five Books of Moses) while "standing on one leg".  

I now undertake a task, possibly no less daunting, regarding CMMI.  And, if there ever were anyone more appropriate to try it, I doubt I’ve met them.

Seriously though, much has been written here and many other places (not to mention eons of conference and user group content) about a number of "universal truths" about CMMI.  Let’s get these out there first, but without dwelling on them:

  • There are no "processes" in CMMI, only practices, and there’s a difference.
  • The practices in CMMI are "what" but not "how".
  • These practices are use to improve your processes, not to define them.
  • The CMMI does not require the SCAMPI appraisal to be effective.  You can use CMMI to improve your operation without ever using the SCAMPI to appraise your use of CMMI.
  • 42.  OK.  Not really.

However, not a single one of these "truths" explain the point of CMMI, or,  how to actually use CMMI.  So, here it goes:

Each one of the practices in CMMI improves some aspect of your organization’s performance resulting from how you do your work.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s providing a service or developing a product.  And, it doesn’t matter whether you do so using so-called traditional development methods or Agile approaches.  If you have performance issues in an area of your operation (called, "Process Areas" in CMMI), Check each of the practices in that area for activities in your operation that might be causing those performance issues. 

It’s assumed, then, if you don’t have any issues covered by a practice then you don’t need to do anything about a practice, because you’re already doing it.  This says nothing of how well you do it, why you do it, how you do it, whether you recognize that you do it, or whether the fact that you do it is a complete coincidental freak of nature, but, if you read a practice, understand the risk it avoids, and you don’t encounter that risk, you’re somehow performing that practice.  Pretty simple.

I’ll repeat and summarize that two-step thought experiment:

  1. Look in the process areas for practices that address performance issues you’re experiencing with the operation of your work.  When you encounter a practice (or more than one), the absence of which can explain why you’re seeing those issues, make appropriate changes to your operation so that you incorporate that/those practice(s) into your operation.  Rinse and repeat.
  2. Practices that don’t represent risks or issues you’re not seeing are (pretty much, by definition) practices you’re somehow managing to accomplish.  Don’t bother with them — unless you notice that you don’t like something about how you do it, but that’s a different priority/matter.

Keep in mind, this says nothing of

  • whether what you do/don’t do will suffice as "evidence" for an appraisal
  • how well you perform the practices (regardless of whether or not you perform them or believe you can use them to improve),
  • what it takes to incorporate practices or make change, in general, happen in your operation,
  • whether an appraisal team will concur with whether you do/don’t perform practices, or
  • you interpret practices in constructive ways.

Nonetheless, if you internalize the significance of the above 2 steps, you can (I dare say, "will") save yourselves a lot of time and grief when using CMMI.  This approach can certainly help you prioritize the practices for which to focus on, appraisal or not.  And, if you do take this approach towards preparation for an appraisal, keep in mind the bulleted caveats and don’t try this alone.

Posted in Agile, Agile+CMMI, Appraisal, Business Benefit, Improvement, LCPBC, Level-Chasing, Performance, Process Improvement, SCAMPI, artifact, artifacts, operation, practices, process area, ratings, value, waste, work, work practices | Comments Off

SEPG North America – Tutorial Day

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

So today started out with a bus ride from the hotel to the Savannah International Trade and Convention Center rather than the expected ferry ride over the river.  A container ship in the port managed to get damaged and leaked fuel into the Savannah River on Sunday immediately closing the river to non-clean-up traffic, including the otherwise convenient cross-river ferry.

Be that as it may, the bus ride gave me an opportunity to connect with Michele Moss from Booz-Allen, Hamilton.  A kindred spirit in things related to "the future of process".  She and I had plans to meet anyway some time today to discuss ideas about "bringing ‘younger people’ into the field" and a related topic, addressing modern-day issues such as cyber, agile and value as these concerns are manifested in processes and process improvement.

First order of the day after registration was to co-create what I perceived as a rather successful (and well-attended) tutorial with Judah Mogilensky on a tailoring for SCAMPI appraisals that increases efficiency, collaboration, and reduces time and cost, we called "One-Stop Shopping".  Immediately following, Michele and I met with Bob Rosenstein, the events and conferences manager at SEI.  David Anderson, just arriving to the venue, was a very beneficial addition to the discussion, conveying his experience with creating communities and conferences specific to a community such as his LSSC.  Dana Hanzlik and Danny Pipitone from SEI’s PR group also sat in on the conversation.  About the only definitive expectation to come out of this meeting (other than our commitment to come to the retrospective with with data from the Peer-to-Peer), was that SEI will be open to more closely tying into other gatherings.  Not bad since we had no expectations going in, and, even if we had, it wouldn’t have been reasonable to have expected any commitments.

Much came up in just under an hour with Bob.  We’re planning to include bits of this topic in our end-of-conference committee retrospective on Thursday.  Part of what will feed into that retrospective will be a Peer-to-Peer session on Wednesday afternoon that Michele and I will be co-creating and was planned with David’s help.  Our Peer-to-Peer is being billed as, "Where do we go from here? Value, Agile, Cyber, and all things Future Processes."

The mind-map of the problem-space was really intriguing.  This will not be an easy matter.

After a conference lunch with David and Michele, we split up and I attended the invitation-only advanced overview of the changes to "high maturity" to CMMI v1.3.  Good stuff, really.  Way too geek for here.

After getting as much as I cared to get from the high maturity campfire (which coincided with the moment I sensed my lunch moved far enough down my digestive tract to make room (literally) for a run) I decided to go back to my hotel to squeeze a run in before the evening gorge-fest that includes the opening of the trade-show floor, a board meeting, and later, a surprise opportunity to attend a special reception, all of which were to include food (and in order of continually improving quality at that).

Before I could get back across the river, I nabbed an opportunity to comment on a frequent occurrence here, on the Savannah River:

Several lovely hours later of socializing (albeit, mostly work-related) I’m back at the room planning my day ahead.

Posted in Appraisal, Collaboration, Conference, David Anderson, Efficiency, Jeff Dalton, Judah Mogilensky, LSSC, Michele Moss, Process Improvement, SEI, SEI Partner, SEPG, SEPG Conference, Speaking, Training, value, waste | 1 Comment »