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The Capability Maturity Model for Integration, or CMMI, is the world’s answer to the artisan ways of developing software. The model itself characterizes successful organizations with poor processes as “Ad-hoc” in its maturity level.
An “Ad-hoc” organization might still be successful and produce quality products. The problem is that this is based in heroic efforts and is not only ever harder to repeat, but it is also restrictive of company’s growth.
As a consequence, companies that have not matured their processes are constantly at risk of facing strong competition from a “leaner-meaner” new comer.
The solution has been, for the past ten years, to institutionalize best practices captured under the general name of Process Areas, such as Requirements Management, or Software Configuration Management, coupled with Project Management, to achieve increasing levels of maturity.
This way of evolving development capabilities is proven and has had some spectacular success in the last ten years. Notably some of the world’s leading software firms have achieved incredible project and process management capabilities that translate into complete predictability of the duration, cost, and other relevant parameters of a software project.
So, if this is so effective, how come only a few of the world’s software companies have achieved such excellence?
Time. The problem is the time it takes to achieve those higher levels of excellence. Every expert agrees that at Level 4 of the CMMI companies begin to achieve the highest return of investment. Moreover, there is little real improvement when achieving Level 2 maturity. It is a necessary step in achieving the higher levels, but one that has little immediate payoff.
In fact, it takes over three years, on average, and at least two to get from the Initial Level (1) to the Defined Level (3). That is just for building the foundation.
This length is enough for many companies to give up on what is a proven, sound road to excellence.
The reason it takes so long is that the transformations required by the model are akin to making a jet plane from a propeller plane AS IT FLIES. The Organizational Development challenges, or if you prefer, the Change Management requirements, defy all previous experience of the software development community.
Adoption curves in the discipline range from months to years, OF A SINGLE IMPROVEMENT.
The CMMI model addresses 25 Process Areas, with 76 goals and 460 Practices (CMMI for SE/SW + IPPD disciplines).
This is the reason that organizations are dragged into the CMMI rather than embracing it with fervor. In a business environment where results that are not realized for the next quarter are considered late, working for three years to build the foundation for serious ROI is unacceptable.
This has inspired us to collect our experience as CMMI and process improvement consultants into a “hurry up” process, consisting in creating a parallel organization, full level 3 from day one, in a fraction of the time it takes to evolve the maturity within the organization, and take it to Level 4 in six months.
This method, which Liveware calls "Recasting of the Software Development Organization", guarantees that results from the investment in Software Process Improvement are seen within the quarter, and serious return on the investment can be seen within the fiscal year.
Become part of the industrialized world! Recast your software development organization NOW!
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