This chapter is the "meat and potatoes" chapter. It provides guidelines for creating process improvement documentation and presents templates. You do not have to use these templates; they are simply provided to help you get started. Find something that fits your organization's culture and use it.

Defining Processes

A process consists of:

• Roles and responsibilities of the people assigned to do the work

• Appropriate tools and equipment to support individuals in doing their jobs

• Procedures and methods defining how to do the tasks and the relationships between the tasks

A process is not just a high-level flowchart. A life-cycle standard (e.g., DOD-MIL-STD-498 or 2167a) is not a process. A tool is not a process. A process consists of sequential steps of what needs to be done, plus the procedures detailing how to do the whats.

The CMMI definition of a process is found in Chapter 3 of the staged representation. It states that "A process as used in the CMMI product suite consists of activities that can be recognized as implementations of practices in a CMMI model. These activities can be mapped to one or more practices in CMMI process areas to allow a model to be useful for process improvement and process appraisal." Although this definition does focus on implementing the practices of the CMMI, we find the definition unsatisfactory. We prefer to look at the definition in the CMMI for process description. A process description is "a documented expression of a set of...