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In October, 1997, I posted a message to the SEI CBA-Lead Assessor Mailing List asking if any of
the lead assessors had assessed an organization that had used "kits" of
materials to make extremely fast improvement progress.
The responses to this, (October and November, 1997) summarized:
| Four of the ten people who replied said that starting with something (ISO Quality
System, best practices, or a kit of things that have worked before somewhere else) can
speed things up; no one said that progress could be expected in only a few weeks. All
thought that "fast" improvement is on the order of 12 months; no one said that
they thought a KPA or a CMM Level could be mastered by an organization quickly through the
use of pre-packaged documents; the time scale cited in the replies was 'months and years',
not 'days and weeks'.
Three of the respondents felt that using materials in this way, on an accelerated
schedule, would be a sign that the organization was going for a "grade" and not
improvement.
Seven respondents said that the materials to institutionalize capability need to be
developed within the "culture". |
In late February, 1998 I published this feedback and asked if there were further
reactions. The responses from seven lead assessors, summarized, were:
- It takes time for an organization to truly institutionalize new processes called for
when advancing CMM levels, 12 months is a good guideline.
- Example artifacts help, but the materials still need to be tailored and that takes time.
- The length of time for institutionalization depends on the organization's typical
project cycle times and isn't a constant.
Since then, I've worked with organizations going for a grade, who have moved
very quickly as they learned what assessments were looking for; and I've worked
with organizations who were focused on improvement and used various kinds of
assessments to identify improvement opportunities. Both kinds of organizations
achieved what they wanted; however, the ones going for improvement got business
value that those going for the grade didn't get.
If you have comments you'd like to add, please email.
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