Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Senior Management personnel wanted to make sure the package contained
only the pertinent critical data that could affect a decision they might have to
make in the near future. Cost, staffing, schedule, and risk were clearly prior-
ity topics all agreed with. This led to a question:
What about other areas that are covered by the CMMI model?
GP 2.10 crosses all process areas, and therefore it is expected that activities,
status, and results are addressed that cover all areas. For some process areas,
this was covered in a Management Steering Group (MSG) brief that was held
periodically, addressing the Process Improvement Project status. However,
these meetings often didn't delve into process issues specific to individual
projects. To address this potential need, and keep the Senior Management
brief focused on priority issues, backup slides were included in the brief.
This allowed management to scan lower-priority information and raise any
issues or concerns they might have had.
5.15 “The How Much”—Don't Force the Team to Perform
“Unnatural Acts”
Within the CMMI Project Planning process area, SP 1.2 states:
Establish…estimates of the attributes of the work products and tasks.
This practice generated considerable discussion at BOND and demonstrates
the value of always asking the intent question. At BOND even though the
organization developed software as one of its primary services, they did not
maintain or use common attributes of software such as line of code counts in
their estimation process.
We a s k e d :
What is the intent of this practice?
Part of the intent was to facilitate consistent assessment of the project's
effort, cost, and schedule. BOND had a history of consistently meeting fixed
schedules with high-level startup requirements. Projects succeeded because
project leaders had close working relationships with their customers. They
worked together
collaboratively
12
to establish what functionality was possi-
ble given schedule and cost constraints. As new information arose,
12. Customer collaboration is a common Agile practice. This practice is discussed further in the DART
case study later in this topic.
