DO'S AND DON'TS

DO’S AND DON’TS

Now that you’ve read about the most important aspects of planning and managing a CMMI process improvement project, here are some but not all of the lessons in abbreviated form.

Do

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  Reuse as much as possible.

  
  


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  Make sure everyone is speaking the same language as a prerequisite to starting the CMMI process improvement project.

  
  


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  Use appraisals or other methods to characterize the organization’s current state of process implementation to determine the starting point for process improvement.

  
  


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  Align the business goals for process improvement (desired state) with the higher level organizational goals or strategy.

  
  


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  Employ proven project management techniques to planning and managing the organization’s CMMI process improvement project because they work.

  
  


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  Understand that the process improvement project team will need different skills and knowledge at different times in the project’s life cycle.

  
  


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  Recognize and plan for having very little room to maneuver in trading cost, quality, and schedule in a CMMI-based process improvement project.

  
  


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  In developing and delivering a process system, make sure the project team and stakeholders always exhibit the behaviors they expect to see in others.
  

  
  

Don’t

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  Don’t assume and don’t let others assume that your organization must invent its own way to implement CMMI-based processes.

  
  


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  Don’t think that CMMI-based process improvement must be managed differently than software or systems projects.

  
  


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  Don’t spend hundreds of thousands of your organization’s dollars if CMMI or process improvement work cannot be correlated with any of the organization’s business goals.