Improve

Tuesday starts the official first day of the SEPG conference and it promises to offer concrete information that you can think about and use when you return to your own organizations

Here are a few selections for Tuesday you may want to consider:

• Keynote Panel – Process Improvement on a Regional Scale – Wan Peng Ng, Rafael Salazar Chavez, Barry Dwolatzky – Even if you are not an early morning riser, you will want to get your coffee early and be present for this opening panel session
  • If you represent a country in the “Western World” then you probably think of India and China when you think of global software development. But remember this year’s theme – “Perform At a Higher Level”. Three leaders representing three different countries from around the globe are focusing on “productivity and product quality” to capture their share of the outsourcing market. The influence of TSP (Team Software Process) will be highlighted in their success. Be there for this “how to” discussion!
• Holistic Quality – Bud Glick and Rajesh Sharma
  • Even mentioning quality these days seems dangerous. For many organizations, projects, and individuals, quality is what you have to do to satisfy the PPQA process area and GP 2.9. But Bud and Rajesh have set their sights on giving the topic one more go and making sure that it is not just a mandatory function for CMMI compliance but a strong component supporting an organization’s business objectives
  • Remember, “A focus on quality means a continuing focus on process improvement” according to Dr. Deming
  • Quality comes from improvement of the process!
  • The CMMI has always been a Quality Management document!
• I am a Change Agent: What Do I Do and How Do I Learn How? – Stan Rifkin
  • Process Improvement Means Change! – Over the past twenty years, I have often shared the view that when and if an organization wants to embark on a process improvement initiative, it must also give equal attention to the people or organizational change
  • Stan Rifkin started at the Software Engineering Institute in 1988 about the same time I did and was one of the original thinkers on process groups and what skills they needed to be “change agents” and support the full scope of their organization’s process improvement initiative.
  • With today’s strong focus on CMMI compliance, I highly recommend attending Stan’s presentation and learning about being a “Change Agent” from one of the best.
• High Maturity In Practice: Using Case Studies to Drive Consistent Interpretations – Michael Evanoo and Kathy Smith
  • Since 2006, what constitutes a High Maturity organization, what does a Lead Appraiser look for, what is a Process Performance Baseline or a Process Performance Model has been the topic of conversation, numerous presentations, High Maturity classes, and High Maturity workshops.
  • I personally believe that what has been missing has been case studies with examples that takes high maturity out of the CMMI ML 4 and ML 5 process areas and puts it into everyday facts and figures that can be easily understood and built upon. CHECK THIS ONE OUT FOR SURE!
• Survey Results of Baselines and Models used by Level 4 and 5 Organizations – Ron Radice
  • No high maturity track would be complete without the experienced insight of Ron Radice. Having developed the original concepts of process architecture in the early ‘80s while working for Mr. Watts Humphrey at IBM, Ron has been a pioneer of statistical process control and quantitative control.
  • With all of the hullabaloo over High Maturity and what should and should not be in place, it will definitely be interesting to hear Ron’s input on just “what has really changed in the high maturity community since 2000!
• Maturity Level 4 Results in a Lot of BS – Pat O’Toole
  • Pat has been a leader in supporting and assessing High Maturity organizations almost as long as Ron has and has more than significant experience that he has shared and will continue to share.
  • I am from Texas so I have my own definition of BS, so I will definitely be attending this presentation to understand what guidance Pat is trying to give us.

I will be providing my presentation choices for the remaining two days in subsequent blogs so you will want to check back frequently to see if you agree.  I will also be providing my opinions of the sessions I get to attend during the conference to let you know how I felt about them after I saw the author’s in action.

Catch up with me during the conference and let me hear your reactions to the presentations you have attended. You can easily find me at my partner’s booth 416, Method Park.

More information:  SEPG 2010 Agenda

See you soon!

Tim Kasse
CEO & Principal Consultant
Kasse Initiatives LLC

I will be attending the SEPG 2010 in Savannah this year and one of the reasons is the theme the SEI has chosen to build this world-important conference around.

The theme of this year’s SEPG is “Perform At a Higher Level” and it comes at a time in our country’s and world’s history where solid and higher level performance is needed on all fronts if companies are to be efficient and effective and turn our high quality products and services and keep their customers satisfied.

So with that theme in mind, I took a quick tour of this year’s program to see what would catch my eye and want me to definitely sit in on those presentations. My selections are by no means a reflection on the quality of those I will not mention, but they are ones that piqued my own interest and possibly will pique yours as well.

Here are a few selections for Monday’s tutorials you may want to consider:

• “Organizational Change Management – The key differentiator for sustainable process improvement” – Julie Calfin
  • In a previous blog, I talked about a Change Management Tool Kit that I shared with the SEPG 2009. It should be clear that any process improvement initiative needs not only a focus on the technical side but also on the people side. Check this one out and see what Julie Calfin has to say.
• Reducing the Costs and Increasing the Value of CMMI Reappraisals – Beth Layman
  • Everyone on both sides, the organization to be reappraised and the Lead Appraiser is trying to find legitimate and effective ways to conduct reappraisals and keep costs down. How that can be done is dependent on a number of factors. I will definitely want to hear what Beth has to say.
• The Multiple Quality Models Paradox: How Much “Best Practice” is Just Enough? – Keith Heston
  • Keith’s abstract starts off by asking the question most of us are asking right about now, “Can you really have too much of a good thing?”  His answer is YES! Many organizations starting out on a CMMI journey get overwhelmed with the many current quality models and standards.
  • Keith promises to break down key models and standards such as CMMI, ITIL, and ISO 9001 into their process DNA – quality components to help attendees simplify the way they think about and pursue multi-model improvement. Sounds like advice we all should consider today!
• Agile CMMI: Obtaining Real Benefits from Measurement and High Maturity – Kent Johnson and Margaret Kulpa
  • What is Agile and what does CMMI stand for is still being debated. And Agile and measurement – really? Kent and Margaret have considerable experience in CMMI, Agile, High Maturity and Measurement. If you would like to gain more insight into all four at once, this is the presentation for you!

I will be providing my presentation choices for the remaining three days in subsequent blogs so you will want to check back frequently to see if you agree.

I will also be providing my opinions of the sessions I get to attend during the conference to let you know how I felt about them after I saw the author’s in action.

I hope to see old friends and make new ones at this conference. You can easily find me at my partner’s booth 416, Method Park. We can chat and I can even introduce to one of the best process improvement tools in the business – STAGES!

More information:  SEPG 2010 Agenda

See you soon!

Tim Kasse
CEO & Principal Consultant
Kasse Initiatives LLC

At SEPG 2009 in San Jose, I presented a half-day tutorial titled “Change Mangement Tool Kit.”  The idea of “managing change” may be a lot harder than it sounds, thus the idea of developing and evolving a change management tool kit to help people and organizations in their change efforts. What? I thought process improvement based on the CMMI was about building processes, procedures, standards, guidelines, templates, and checklists that could be matched up against the CMMI practices.

Of course if your process improvement focus is strictly on obtaining a Maturity Level 3 or higher, you might think something like this. But here is my challenge. How many of you are in organizations that built action plans based on assessments / appraisals along with other appropriate input and had a major section in that Action Plan that focued on supporting the changes that would need to be made by the people in your organization. You see, if you want to claim, your organization is engaged in a process improvement initiative, you should be claiming in the same breath that you are engaged in improving the people side of the change as well as the technical process side.

What would you think if someone out of the SEPG or EPG or just PG today, walked into your office and plopped down the latest set of organizational processes. What would you think if the person that brought you this latest and greatest work, told you that this represented “YOUR” new way of working and that you and your project were going to be audited against it from now on? You might be a bit upset. After all, you  are an adult and a professional. Right?

Does your action plan have “people expectations” inside of Change Management side? If you perform testing, you are required to have “expected results” inside of your test plan so that the testing results can be compared against the expected results.

This is exactly what should happen in process improvement efforts!!! When you hand out the new and improved process descriptions, you should have the expected people reactions written down along with the risk mitigations to deal with the people reactions. What? People, risk, risk mitigation. Hey, we are trying to reach ML 3! The people should be following the organizational processes – right?

If your organization’s process improvement Action Plan does not have a complementary Change Management component with expected people results, you might want to revisit and revise it. And if you are not sure what Myers Briggs personality types, or birth order, or risk taking personality has to do with the process improvement initiative, you might want to give us a call and ask about what type of Change Management Tool Kit Method Park can help you build and evolve to answer these questions and ensure you are focus on your most important asset, your people as well as your process descriptions.

See You Soon in Prague

Best Regards,

Tim Kasse

I have ignored the AGILE and CMMI wars for many years and have forced myself into the fray in the past year. If you are taking one side or the other, you have little knowledge of history and probable less history of Systems Engineering.

DR. Win Royce developed the Waterfall model in 1970. It was for Systems Engineering not Software. If you know something of building systems, you will know that all systems have a feedback loop. So did Dr. Royce’s waterfall model. But there was something more. Dr. Royce, in 1970 stated that the strict waterfall model where we asked what the customer wanted and then went off and built it with no more customer interaction was not appropriate. He suggested using “prototypes” to help the customer and the supplier build a mutual understanding of the requirements and then start with the waterfall model, still with feedback loops. The Software Community grabbed hold to the waterfall model and gave it the description and bad rap that one must complete the requirements stage before the design before the ………. In 1986, fourteen (14) years later, Dr. Royce was invited to republish his waterfall article, unedited again. The software community still did not get it.

Later, groups just like the Agile group sprung up to let the software world that this Waterfall stuff was bunk and you should have experts who did pair programming and care about the customer. I am one of the original authors of the CMM and have been actively involved with the CMMI for 20 years. In other words from the beginning. While the folks who created the Agile Manifesto did so in part to create controversy, they have seriously missed the point. Read “Balancing Agility and Discipline” by Barry Boehm and Richard Turner with forewords by Grady Booch, Alistair Cockburn and Arthur Pyster. and Scaling Software Agility by Dean Leffingwell.

Here is my point. Some of the Agile points are well made. Large cooperation’s with Lawyers who were hung up on point-by-point contracts caused the strict following of the Waterfall model and made a mess of things. BUT that was not the fault of the description of the Waterfall Model.

As far as Agile techniques are concerned. Sorry to disappoint all of you do or die fanatics. Prototyping was suggested in 1970. RUP corresponds to CMMI Requirements Development pretty well. There was a 14 month study just on this.

Incremental Development. It is a product lifecycle that has been around for 30 years and is embedded inside of the CMMI. So it goes for Evolutionary Delivery, developed by Tom Gilb a zillion years ago.

So Agile, Evolutionary, Incremental, Prototype, RUP, customer involvement, and others key volatile AGILE words have been around for at least 30 years and are part of the process assets described in OPD of the CMMI. They are techniques that projects must apply as they make BUSINESS SENSE!.

CMMI is process oriented but remember the quality of the process influences the quality of the product. CMMI is about using processes to help build quality products and services that satisfies not only the technical requirements but the customer in the operational environment by the end users that have to use it. CMMI is a spin off of Dr.Demings TQM. Dr. Deming clearly states that process should not be done for process sake but for business. CMMI and process improvement and techniques like Agile and others are about Business.

Please come to the European SEPG and hear my talk titles “The Agile View of the CMMI “and learn even more detail. What makes sense given the constraints your project faces. There are projects that last 12 years that the Waterfall Model fits perfectly. There are 7 days events where the 4 months gathering of requirements is stupid. You only have 7 days. YOU MUST USE YOUR BRAIN AND PUT BUSINESS FIRST!