Released as a successor to the CMM process, CMMi was released in the year 2002. The model was created by the Carnegie Mellon University and is a trademark owned by them. Read on to understand more about the CMMi process and how it helps in improvising the process of an organization.
What is CMMi?
The Capability Maturity Model Integration, or popularly known as CMMi, is an improvement process that aims at improving the performance of processes in an organization. The CMMi approach provides organizations with the needed approach for essential process improvement. The CMMi model integrates the functions in an organization, sets their goals and priorities, and guides them through quality processes.
Benefits of CMMi process
The benefits of using CMMi are largely based on the improvements in the organization’s processes that can be brought in. Additionally, the CMMi model integrates the business goals and objectives with the activities of the organization thus making activity tracking an easy feature. The integration also improves visibility and thus helps to ensure that the customer’s expectations are met as desired on an end-to-end basis. It also ensures that an increased visibility is created on the activities of the organization which makes sure that the customer demands and expectations are met.
The process also follows a clean documentation policy through which best practices and innovative techniques can be created. With a neat and clean documentation policy, the learning factors from new areas of practice can be increased thus improving the process to create a better product.
Steps in CMMi Delivery Process
There are many different steps that are involved in the implementation of CMMi based process. Following is a sequential list of the steps involved and might vary from organization to organization.
1. Obtain Sponsorship and Funding – Ensure that your CMMi process Improvement program has a management sponsor and a funding option before you start with the process implementation. Such funding and sponsorship are both critical to ensure the program’s success. You can choose to educate the management team about CMMi before you approach them with the funding request.
2. Core Training Activities – Once you have finalized on a funding sponsorship, it is necessary to understand the basic concepts of the CMMi Product Suite. There are many organizations which offer training sessions on the CMMi services. Such courses will help you understand the concepts of the process before you implement it.
3. Find a process case that need to undergo change – Look out for the process that needs a change or improvement and analyze the causes associated with it. Create a strong case for the change and include the reasons and benefits based on the process change. Your reasons can also include the cost benefits that are associated with the change. Create a presentation and present it to the core people involved and explain about the opportunities.
4. Train the involved people – It is mandatory that the core people involved in these activities are also trained on the basis of CMMi theories.
5. Create a Process Group – Once your process improvement presentation has been approved and necessary permissions obtained, form a group or team of people who will work on this process improvement activity. The team can consist of mentors and starters on CMMi. The team will exist for the duration of time till which the process improvement activity will continue.
6. Analyze the existing process activities – Look at the existing processes and find out where you are. A statistical or graphical representation of your current data and plotting it against the best practices will help you to derive upon the gaps. Try to gather as much of information from management leads, managers, project leads and employees to make sure that you have taken all aspects into consideration.
7. Plot your future goal – Using the same measurement techniques, understand the future picture and communicate it well to the whole process group. Effective communication and co-ordination are important aspects of the process improvement process.
8. Track progress on a regular basis – It is important to create a progress report on a frequent basis and analyze on your performance towards the goal. You can find a mentor or an appraiser who can help you in this task.
