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on individual project starts, which is the common method observed in
most organizations.
6
NANO had also found a way to tailor their processes more efficiently.
NANO observed that they had three repeating types of projects and the tai-
loring required by each project type was almost identical. Rather than have
each project at startup repeat this same tailoring, they created
pre-tailored tem-
plates
for each of the project types, simplifying the tailoring process at each
project startup. This made sense at NANO because of the repeating nature of
these three project types. This might or might not make sense for other orga-
nizations.
Nothing in the CMMI says when you need to do your tailoring and what
process assets you need to tailor. If you have repeating project types like
NANO, consider using the pre-tailoring approach to save time and effort for
each of your projects. Also, it is worth giving thought to when it might make
sense to tailor your roles and responsibilities given the nature of the projects
you have in your organization and the changing skills of your people.
CAUTION
Don't let pre-tailoring replace important planning that needs to take place at
the start of each project.
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6.30 Planning with Uncertainty Using an Agile and
CMMI-Compliant Approach
At NANO, all the leaders who directly reported to the Director had not
bought into the whole CMMI idea. Since the Director had initiated the off-
site on roles and responsibilities and because process-related actions came
out of this, I used this effort to gain momentum by aligning the CMMI plan
with the already agreed-to process-related actions out of the meeting.
The Project Planning (PP) Process Area of the CMMI model has fourteen spe-
cific practices. The CMMI doesn't tell you when or how to conduct these
practices. It doesn't say you can't plan incrementally. Furthermore, Project
6. The topic of balancing uniqueness and consistency is discussed at greater length in Chapters 9 and 10.
7. Tailoring is covered in greater detail in the following chapter on the GEAR case study.
