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 An
organisation implementing a CMM level 5 quality management system
is on the road to becoming a learning organisation. Working in such
an organisation should be sheer joy, states Raj Dhillon
Organisations need a judicious mix of people,
processes and tools to get work done. In early stages of their evolution,
organisations may rely more on people with little dependence on
processes and as they mature, implement processes to balance out
their dependence on people.
Process frameworks, such as the software CMM,
help in implementing processes as per international best practices.
Setting up these processes and getting assessed or certified is
the easy part. Unfortunately, getting people to participate enthusiastically
in process improvement is entirely another matter!
Real benefits can be achieved only if people
embrace a process approach in daily work and genuinely believe that
process improvement will directly benefit them by helping achieve
their goals.
Best practices
The software CMM is a process framework focused
on software projects incorporating the best practices found in successful
software companies. These best practices are bundled together and
presented in a five-layered model of process maturity.
The real strength of the CMM comes from the fact
that the model mimics the ability of humans to learn from their
experience and to store this information for future use. Shorn of
technicalities, the five levels of maturity defined by the CMM are:
Level 1—The organisation depends mainly
on people.
Level 2—The organisation implements basic
processes at the project level. New projects can repeat the performance
of previous projects.
Level 3—The organisation learns from the
experience of its various projects and creates organisation-level
processes. New projects use the organisation’s process repository
and improve upon it with their own experience.
Level 4—The organisation learns to manage
with numbers using data from past experience. It creates metrics
baselines, which can be used to estimate, predict and establish
goals. The baselines get refined with every new project experience.
Level 5—Organisations use knowledge from
past mistakes to prevent them from happening in the future. They
try to understand and eradicate the root causes of defects and create
defect prevention repositories, which could prove useful to others
in preventing mistakes in the first place.
Learning organisation
In essence, an organisation implementing a CMM
level 5 quality management system is on the road to becoming a learning
organisation. Working in such an organisation should be sheer joy!
However, it’s unfortunate that many people
still treat the CMM as just another manifestation of the Quality
Department’s efforts to make them do additional work for some
form of certification.
The root cause of this attitude is that, while
implementing the CMM, we often forget that process is not an end
in itself. It is a way to enable people to do their work efficiently
and effectively. People would enjoy working in a process-oriented
learning environment if only they understood the essence of what
they are doing and felt empowered to use and improve the system.
Some best practices to ensure people align with the CMM are discussed
below.
At the heart of the programme there should be
training for people to understand the ‘essence’ of the
system. People need to be told the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’
of the framework and not simply ‘what’ is expected from
them. Training should enthuse people by focusing on how you can
learn from and contribute to the knowledge repositories i.e. organisation
processes, numbers and common causes.
Initiating changes
People must feel empowered and encouraged to
initiate changes in the system for enhanced effectiveness and the
process to request this change must also be simple and well understood.
The change team, which manages the repositories, usually called
Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG), should be drawn from
the projects and supported by a few process consultants. Most crucially,
the change team needs to move fast to implement changes suggested
by people as nothing dampens the spirit of learning more than slow
and tardy implementation of change requests, owing to elaborate
document control procedures.
The metrics programme is a common ‘party
pooper’. Nothing puts off people more than having to measure
something they cannot relate to. Selection of standard industry
metrics and applying them across the board only turns away people
from using numbers. In the software services industry, diversity
is a fact of life. Projects differ from each other, not only in
what they deliver but also in how they deliver. The design of the
metrics programme must take this diversity into account and ensure
that measurements at the project level not only make sense to the
team but also are relevant in that context.
Cause and effect relationships
People must see a clear linkage between their
use of the system and the success of the organisation. This involves
establishing cause and effect relationships between business goals
and benefits of using the process. For example, growth of business
in existing accounts has a direct relationship with a happy customer.
Therefore, management needs to reinforce the link between on-time-defect-free-delivery,
customer delight and growth in the account. Needless to say the
metrics program should be designed to establish this relationship.
The defect prevention program is often viewed
as additional work. Project teams under delivery pressure are keen
to resolve a problem and move on. Carrying out root cause analysis
seems like extra work, not relevant to the current project. Without
this activity, the knowledge in defect prevention repository remains
shallow and people do not find much use for it. Setting up a defect
prevention team under the SEPG to periodically facilitate defect
prevention activities with project teams can help to break this
Catch-22 situation. Once people start using the repository and find
it useful, they will start contributing to it on their own.
Finally, the Quality function needs to re-invent
itself as a facilitator instead of the frequently viewed position
of an auditor. The process group and QA folks play a key role by
establishing a link between projects and the function. The function
itself must go into communication overdrive. A monthly newsletter
can do wonders. Establishing a help desk where anyone can call in
with a question or a request for help in using the system is another
great enabler!
To conclude, the success of any initiative is
directly proportional to the enthusiasm it can generate in the people
who use it. The CMM is a great learning system. It has a natural
affinity to people’s desire to grow. It, but naturally, would
be most beneficial to organisations to put people at the centre
while implementing such a system.
Raj Dhillon is Head Quality and IS, Zensar Technologies
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