CMMI® Survival Guide: Just Enough Process Improvement [Paperback]

Suzanne Garcia (Author), Richard Turner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2006

Praise for CMMI® Survival Guide

"Traveling down the CMMI road can be difficult and time-consuming. Garcia and Turner have given us a practical roadmap that addresses the key points to learn as well as the many potholes to avoid. Their Survival Guide is a most valuable resource for the journey. It will help immeasurably in achieving the process improvement that you seek."

—Dr. Howard Eisner, Distinguished Research Professor, George Washington University

"Helps you get to the 'red meat' of the CMMI quickly and with minimum pain."

—Donald J. Reifer, President, Reifer Consultants, Inc.

"The best words I can offer potential readers is that you must have this book, not on your shelf, but with you for repeated reading to glean new ideas or reinforce old ones you gained from the past readings. If you have ever been directly involved in a process improvement initiative or if you are starting one, this book can only help you to do a better job. And while [the authors] may not have written this book explicitly for experienced consultants, I found it a great reference even for those of us who helped start this industry, because it provides clear and useful answers to those tough questions we are asked all of the time."

—Tim Kasse, CEO and Principal Consultant, Kasse Initiatives LLC

"This book contains practical (working) tips for the 'getting started' phase of process improvement, which is the hardest one in the road to improving one's processes."

—Agapi Svolou, Principal of Alexanna, LLC, and SEI CMMI Transition Partner

"The authors have done an outstanding job in providing guidance for process improvement from a practical perspective. Instead of focusing on a single technique or approach, they have provided a variety of methods for process improvement implementation and have framed their discussion with rich context from lessons learned. The concepts described in this book will be useful to both those starting CMMI implementations and to those who are well into their journey but are still looking for ways to lessen the pain and provide value-added improvements. Reading the book is like being in the audience during a live presentation by SuZ and Rich—they wrote the book as they would present the information to a live audience."

—Bill Craig, Director, Software Engineering Directorate, AMRDEC, RDECOM

"I have been involved in process improvement since the early 90's and many of the mistakes that I made could have been prevented if this book had been available then."

—Claude Y. Laporte, Professor, ETS Universite du Quebec

"Primarily, the book is practical. The guidance presented is geared toward someone who is not exactly sure why they need process improvement, but is presented with the fact that they must do it. Very often these are smaller organizations, with limited resources, and uncertain support from above. As I read the book, I thought almost immediately of a couple of organizations with which I am familiar who could use this kind of tutelage. There are real, and useful, techniques in this book that I believe can help these kinds of organizations prioritize and establish reasonable plans for improving the processes in the organization. I also like the sidebars and personal observations. Discussions of experience can really help organizations through the various pitfalls that are part of developing and deploying processes. It makes the book more of a 'real life' guide, and not a theoretical exercise. Finally, the book is an enjoyable read. The conversational style of the book (and the humor) make it much easier to read than many of the books I have read in the past."

—Alexander Stall, Principal Process Improvement Engineer, Systems and Software Consortium

The CMMI provides a framework for process improvement spanning the life cycle of a product or service, from conception through delivery and maintenance. Widely and beneficially adopted around the world, the size and apparent complexity of the framework have nonetheless been daunting to some organizations. That need not be so. With a proper guide to help navigate around unknown dangers, potential pitfalls, and false paths, you too, can realize substantial business value from a successful CMMI implementation. This book is such a guide, full of the real-life examples to ease your way, and written in a lighter style to ease your reading.

The CMMI® Survival Guide is an effective resource for multiple readerships. If you are just now considering a process improvement program, with the CMMI among your options, the authors' discussion of relevant issues will enhance your business case right from the start. If you have already decided to implement the CMMI, the authors' practical knowledge will help you make the most of your efforts. Even if you are well into a CMMI implementation, but are lost, stuck, or going around in circles, the authors' valuable advice will help you regain your direction.

If you work in a smaller or resource-strapped organization, you will particularly benefit from the authors' description of alternative paths to process improvement—approaches that are more incremental or agile, and less intensive, than you might imagine for a CMMI implementation. The authors draw on their extensive experience working with diverse organizations, and on the CMMI tools, techniques, and templates developed for those organizations.

Whatever your background or need, the CMMI® Survival Guide will help you survey the CMMI territory, consult possible road maps, learn from other CMMI explorers, weigh the benefits of hiring a living guide, and even consider whether the trip is right for you.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Suzanne (SuZ) Garcia is a senior member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. Since the early 1990's, Suz has led, authored, or reviewed a broad range of CMMs, covering all the topics contained in the latest CMMI. In addition, she has spent the past decade developing and applying techniques that support CMMI implementation in diverse settings, from adoptions by smaller organizations to adoptions in large, system-of-systems, contexts.

Richard Turner is a Fellow at the Systems and Software Consortium. For more than thirty years, he has worked with industry, government, and academia to improve the development and acquisition of complex, software-intensive systems. A member of the initial CMMI author team, he has led process improvement initiatives in information technology, system engineering, and software acquisition. He is a coauthor of Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed (Addison-Wesley, 2004) and CMMI® Distilled, Second Edition (Addison-Wesley, 2004).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Adopting CMMI (or any other process improvement initiative) can seem like navigating a jungle full of unknown dangers, pitfalls, and false paths. No matter where you are in your process improvement journey, there are a lot of reasons why you might need a CMMI survival guide. If you are just starting out, you'll need to survey the territory, consult maps, talk to other explorers, look into hiring guides, and maybe reconsider whether you really need to take that trip after all. If you are already committed, but feel like you're lost or stuck or going around in circles, your outlook may be reduced to simple survival. On the other hand, if you have begun to see past the dangers and into the pos*sibilities, you may want some additional tools and techniques to get the most out of your journey. For all of you, we are pleased to present this compendium of knowledge and experience about the process improvement jungle in the hope that it can make your trip more efficient, valuable, and satisfying.

We have three goals for this volume: We'd like to calm the nervous, help the little guy, and make process improvement more agile. Let's look at each of these.

Calming the nervous

We've heard lots of nervous concerns about CMMI. It's as though Dante's "Abandon all hope ye who enter here" somehow were added to the CMMI shingle. Consider (if you will) the following common perceptions about CMMI:

• CMMI is big and intimidating. Who wants to wade through a 700-page-plus book to try to understand it?

• Our choose one: customer/acquiring company/prime told us we have to use it.

• We thought we were immune to process improvement because we don't build software. Now they tell us CMMI applies to us.

• It costs so much to implement. We don't have that kind of overhead funding available.

• It seems to take such a long time before return on investment is achieved.

• It was written by and for large, government-driven businesses. It can't possibly be useful—or usable—for small companies and organizations or limited projects.

• We want to be agile, and CMMI is ueber-high ceremony.

• We'll wait until it's absolutely, positively unavoidable—and then we'll bite the bullet and buy our way in.

Fortunately, most of this anxiety is based on misperceptions rising from a somewhat old-fashioned, traditional role for process improvement. While we can't counter every fear, we can provide suggestions for ways to mitigate many of the scary risks.

Helping the little guy

We believe that small businesses and organizations are particularly underserved by current resources. Our experience tells us that process improvement, when approached sensibly, can benefit many smaller organizations. For that reason, we've included examples from smaller environments. Our approach to incremental process improvement, driven by specific business value rather than simply seeking a maturity level, is especially appropriate for resource-strapped smaller organizations. If your business fits into this category, we hope the book will help you find the confidence to actively adopt new methods that have worked so well in other, larger places.

Making process improvement more agile

One response to traditionally process-heavy approaches, at least in the software industry, has been the agile methods movement. Methods such as Extreme Programming and Scrum have gained attention as approaches that are designed for easier implementation. Some argue that methods like these are incompatible with models like CMMI; others have found ways to use elements of both in complementary ways.

In this book, we'll take a somewhat different approach and describe ways in which process improvement itself can take advantage of the agile philosophy and practices. We describe a more lightweight, focused, and time-constrained process improvement life cycle that we believe captures the flexibility and responsiveness of agile development methods.

Through years of interaction with diverse organizations, we've seen the many ways that models and methods are used effectively to promote business value, and nearly as many ways that they can be used unproductively. So we've written this book to share approaches that have worked and identify a few that haven't. You can judge for yourself what might be achievable when you attempt to improve project management, engineering, or support practices in your own business environment.

The book's format is intended to support readers who need a quick scan of the territory as well as those who are looking for actual techniques and templates. We believe that no one has all the answers. Many of our techniques are ones we have learned from others, and wherever possible, we'll tell you where to find more in-depth information.

If you are just hearing about CMMI, model-based improvement, or agile methods, we hope that this book will provide a coherent set of steps and techniques to get you started on your path to improved practices.

For those of you who are against the wall and under orders to adopt a model or method, we believe you will find fresh ways to approach your mandate, making the experience productive for you and your organization.

And for all of you who pick up this book, we hope you'll find it enjoyable enough that you actually finish reading it! As we explore this material with you, it's the most ambitious goal we've set for ourselves.

Organization

In general, we are writing to you in much the way we would talk with you: directly and with a bit of wry humor thrown in. The organization of the book, based on an extended adventure analogy, is straightforward. There is increasing detail as you read, with earlier chapters being prologue to later chapters, thus providing good "management-level" reading. At the end of each chapter, we collect any references to other books or material. Occasionally we relate (mostly) real stories that we hope illustrate he subject through examples.

The book is divided into five parts:

Part I: Scouting the Territory. We describe process improvement from a practical standpoint, describing why we think it is worth pursuing, how it is helpful, and why it isn't as easy as it sounds.

Part II: Mapping the Route. We provide some specific guides that can make process improvement more organized and often more effective.

Part III: Surviving the Passage. We present a case study for those who like "reality shows" and describe ways in which survival of a process improvement initiative is analogous to physical survival as taught by the U.S. Army.

Part IV: Experiencing the Journey. This is the section where the rubber meets the road. We discuss the specifics of executing a process improvement initiative and use CMMI to lead by example.

Part V: Outfitting Your Expedition (PI Resources). This is our tools-and-techniques section, where we can go into more detail about some of the tools we've mentioned in previous chapters. We also provide a complete bibliography.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (October 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321422775
• ISBN-13: 978-0321422774
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #660,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Far more readable and effective than other process books..., April 7, 2007

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: CMMI® Survival Guide: Just Enough Process Improvement (Paperback)

I've been exposed to a number of process improvement methodologies throughout my career, as well as read a number of books that try to explain them. To be honest, it's not a subject that's high on my "can't wait to read" list. But were more books styled like CMMI Survival Guide: Just Enough Process Improvement by Suzanne Garcia and Richard Turner, I would probably be more inclined to give them a chance. This book covers what you need to know without all of the mind-numbing jargon and detail...

Contents:
Part 1 - Scouting the Territory: Why We Think Process Is Important; Why Process Improvement Helps; Why Process Improvement Isn't Trivial
Part 2 - Mapping the Route: CMMI As Your Guide; A Decision-based Life Cycle for Improvement
Part 3 - Surviving the Passage: A PI Case Study; Survival and PI
Part 4 - Experiencing the Journey: Developing and Sustaining Sponsorship; Setting and Measuring Against Realistic Goals; Managing an Appraisal Life Cycle; Developing Process Improvement Infrastructure; Defining Processes; Looking Ahead
Part 5 - Outfitting Your Expedition (PI Resources): Tools and Techniques
Bibliography; Index

The basic direction of the authors is to talk to the reader like they were actually there, and to simplify CMMI so that it can be grasped and understood. And when you place a traditionally process-heavy methodology like CMMI up against agile methodologies like Extreme Programming, you realize just what a task the authors have taken on. Surprisingly, they pull it off pretty well. Part 1 lays the foundation for why a business or organization needs to have some sort of process improvement plan in place. The larger the organization is, the more important it becomes. Then using CMMI as the framework, part 2 covers the main topics of just what makes up the process improvement effort. Part 3 is where the application of the process becomes concrete. They use an easily-understandable case study that takes concepts and applies them to actual situations. That's usually where the large "formal" books fail. You can stuff as much information into your head as you want, but until it gets applied, it's pretty useless. Part 4 goes into more details of how the process works on an ongoing basis, followed by the actual tools and techniques that come into play for CMMI (part 5). By the end, you've covered everything you need to know (and you haven't poked your eyeballs out in frustration).

While this might not be the "official" guide to a methodology, it's far more readable and applicable than books three times its size. And if you can read and understand the material, you have a far better chance of making it actually work...

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting and recognizing benefit from process improvement, February 22, 2007

By 

Malcom Patrick "mpatrx" (Benicia, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: CMMI® Survival Guide: Just Enough Process Improvement (Paperback)

An easy to read book about using an abstract model: this is quite a feat. This is the book I'd write about improving processes, if I had the time, the talent, the motivation, etc. I've been doing this improvement work for many years, occasionally with the authors, and it is gratifying to see that they've captured so many good practices and useful ideas and shared them in an accessible, friendly way.
Many different fields use CMMI as a standard, to decide about improvement planning, to gauge their results, to convince customers they are reliable. This book shows the way around the pit-falls, points out the poison-ivy patches, and can help people find their way to the benefits of process improvement.
Of course CMMI for Development can be daunting: it describes professional engineering and engineering management practices in enough detail to be used in several ways by different communities. Finally, it isn't CMMI that drives people to disappointing improvement results. Mistakes in judging how easy it is to get people to change or even to describe their way of doing things often have led to "heavy" process implementations, as change agents add more and more detail hoping it will get people to use the processes. Or, mistaking how fast processes can be implemented can lead to mandated processes that work well for no one.
The authors have accurately described how to find your "main, broad road" to the benefits of improvements, and the many factors that you have to consider that will lead you there. Now I don't have to write this book. I'll give it to our customer's managers and their process engineers and be confident that they can get good direction from it: we now have a rich resource of techniques, stories, and directions that we can refer to in our projects.
Okay, some criticism: the techniques described in the last chapters are very effective, but have to be approached with discipline as well as a fun-finding mind-set, so they may not work for everyone. But that's one of the good things about the book- the authors say that few improvements work exactly the way you want, the very first time. Honest and useful advice.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a brief overview of CMMI, November 2, 2006

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: CMMI® Survival Guide: Just Enough Process Improvement (Paperback)

Garcia and Turner address a widely held concern about adopting CMMI. That it is overly heavy, with much to assimilate before a group of programmers can usefully apply it. Well ok, CMMI can be used for more than just software development. But as a practical matter, most of its users and proposed users are in that business. The book is perhaps also a reaction to the Agile process. The latter is in some ways the mirror image of CMMI, with short design and coding cycles.

The book gives a relatively quick walkthrough of CMMI. A broad picture about using CMMI to improve your development process. En route, it also discusses general topics like project management issues, which are not exclusive to CMMI. The entire text is really just a primer for CMMI. It shows that CMMI has many subtopics, and the procedures involved can be rather detailed. Adding up to a formidable total barrier for the newcomer. But the text does supply enough information to give an appreciation of what CMMI can do for you, and the concepts to be mastered.

Of all the chapters, I found Chapter 11 to be the most formidable. It seems to give the strongest indicator of the amount of material in CMMI. Just consider the O process areas within CMMI. "You'll need people who can implement the practices in Organisational Process Focus, Organisational Process Definition, Organisational Training, Organisational Innovation and Deployment and (eventually) Organisational Process Performance". Whew! And the chapter goes on to give more information about what these might entail. No wonder some might baulk at CMMI.