CMMI Case Study
by Dan Fleck
Reference:
A CMMI Case Study: Process Engineering vs.
Culture and Leadership
by
Jeffrey L. Dutton,Jacobs Sverdrup
Coming up: Overview
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)
Coming up: Beginnings…
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
Coming up: Reality
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
Coming up: Plan 2: EPIC
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
Coming up: EPIC progress
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.
Coming up: New Mechanisms Adopted
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.
Coming up: Results?
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…
Coming up: Does it ever end?
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”
Coming up: Challenges and Lessons Learned
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
Coming up: Leadership Didn’t Know
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
toup:
appreciate.
Coming
You should know
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
Coming up: What do you get?
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-bycategory.html
Coming up: What do you get?