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CMMI Case Study by Dan Fleck. Reference: A CMMI Case Study: Process Engineering vs. Culture and Leadership by Jeffrey L. Dutton,Jacobs Sverdrup. Overview. Jacobs Sverdup’s Advanced Systems Group 400 employees Seven states
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CMMI Case Studyby Dan Fleck Reference: A CMMI Case Study: Process Engineering vs. Culture and Leadership by Jeffrey L. Dutton,Jacobs Sverdrup
Overview • Jacobs Sverdup’s Advanced Systems Group • 400 employees • Seven states • Wide range of services and products to all 4 military branches and NASA • Range of sizes (40 people, 4 years to 2 people, 12 months)
Beginnings… • Chartered Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG) • SEPG trained field office Process Action Teams (PATs) • Idea: Buy-in would be easier with PATs in the field offices
Reality • PAT teams had problems with buy-in, non-participation -- no one likes process • Attempts: • Tying perf appraisal to PAT participation • Positive feedback systems • Newsletters • Intense training
Plan 2: EPIC • SEPG reformed into Engineering Process Improvement Center (EPIC) • Created 2 person core team and got buy-in from field office leads (heads of field offices) • Adopted life-cycle framework from ISO/IEC 12207
EPIC progress • Over two years defined six major work products: • An integrated engineering handbook for project managers, engineers, and management. • An engineering performance improvement program plan for the EPIC. • A process and product quality assurance plan for quality assurance. • A measurement and analysis plan for the entire organization. • A purchasing manual for contract managers and project managers. • A knowledge management plan.
New Mechanisms Adopted • A life cycle that is both flexible and recursive, allowing tailoring to support the needs of the project and the customer. • A repeatable tailoring approach that accommodates services, systems, and hardware and software development for small to large project sizes. • The use of principal managers and leaders in the organization to teach critical courses. • The early development of an automated measurement database. • The development (later than we wanted) of a distributed work environment to support process engineering and information sharing.
Results? • External audits noted they still had buy-in and institutionalization lacking • Realized they needed more external audits because “organizational delusion” did not let them see the problems. • Refocused on knowledge management to fix these issues • Added pilot projects, all levels of review (low level to senior management), quality reviews, etc…
Does it ever end? • Pilot projects showed numerous areas for improvements • Eventually organizational culture of change emerged helped by a strong leadership culture willing to change and everyone with a feeling of “People are our greatest asset” and “Growth is imperative”
Challenges and Lessons Learned • Leaders that got into leadership by providing their own “stovepipe processes” • Leaders asked to abandon tried and true processes • Needed people to trust EPIC to promote buy-in • Needed to respond quickly and positively to criticism and challenges to the process
Leadership Didn’t Know • The CMMI really does change the way every part of the organization operates. • The costs associated with adoption of the CMMI are real and cannot be avoided. • Routine actions have to be conducted in accordance with the standard process, as well as corrective and near-crisis actions. • A CMMI process improvement effort is not just another project, where the work products are the most important output. • Some of the people you have worked with and trusted for years will resist the improvement effort for various well-intentioned reasons. • Assessments cannot be used to provide feedback and evaluate the performance of individual elements of the organization. • The CMMI process improvement effort must be carefully aligned with the goals of the organization to make it worthwhile. • The management and leadership style that has served to bring leaders this far in the organization now must be negotiated with the unseen authors of a complex model they are just beginning to appreciate.
You should know • There will be more challenges then you expect • Some heros will leave the company • It will cost more than you expect • Leadership must believe in the process and be willing to weather the storm • Leaders must also know and trust their people who are implementing the program
What do you get? • 20% reduction in unit s/w costs - Lockheed Martin • 15% decrease in defect find and fix cost - Lockheed Martin • Costs dropped 48% from a baseline prior to CMM as the achieved CMMI-3 - DB Systems GambH Estimation accuracy improved 72% on average in three technical areas - Siemens • Percentage of milestones met improved from approximately 50 percent to approximately 85 percent following organization focus on CMMI - General Motors • Many many more at: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/results/results-by-category.html