CMMI Case Study by Dan Fleck

1
CMMI Case Studyby Dan Fleck

• Reference A CMMI Case Study Process
  Engineering vs. Culture and Leadership
• by
• Jeffrey L. Dutton,Jacobs Sverdrup

2
Overview

• Jacobs Sverdups 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)

3
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

4
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

5
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

6
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.

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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.

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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

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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

10
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

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Leadership Didnt 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.

12
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

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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/res
  ults/results-by-category.html