TABLE OF CONTENTS 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.
Reuse as much as possible.
Make sure everyone is speaking the same language as a prerequisite to starting the CMMI process improvement project.
Use appraisals or other methods to characterize the organization s current state of process implementation to determine the starting point for process improvement.
Align the business goals for process improvement (desired state) with the higher level organizational goals or strategy.
Employ proven project management techniques to planning and managing the organization s CMMI process improvement project because they work.
Understand that the process improvement project team will need different skills and knowledge at different times in the project s life cycle.
Recognize and plan for having very little room to maneuver in trading cost, quality, and schedule in a CMMI-based process improvement project.
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 assume and don t let others assume that your organization must invent its own way to implement CMMI-based processes.
Don t think that CMMI-based process improvement must be managed differently than software or systems projects.
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.
