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of the impact, they would take on too much work. Once this realization set in,
and they found themselves under pressure to stay on schedule, they often
resorted to cutting corners, such as paring down design reviews or testing.
Since “no one had a hammer” in this organization, the process would fre-
quently lead to long integrations—the consequence of not doing an adequate
job up front.
7.15 Asking the Intent Question Leads to Behavior
Change
I have previously discussed the importance of always asking the intent ques-
tion when evaluating an organization's current processes against certain
CMMI practices. At GEAR, I found they did do planning, but a large part of
the results of their project planning efforts was kept in a PowerPoint brief. In
the gap analysis out-brief, I referenced Specific Practice 2.7 of the Project
Planning Process Area, which states:
Establish and maintain the overall project plan content.
The phrase “establish and maintain” means document
6
and use, which
implies the need to keep the plan current. Again, nothing in the CMMI
requires their plan to be in any particular format. However, in my experi-
ence, most organizations do not go back to update PowerPoint briefs when a
plan changes.
They agreed that this artifact had worked well for them to kick off a project,
but when things changed they never went back to update the slides. As a
result, when new people came on the project it was difficult to get them up to
speed on the current project plan.
By continually asking the intent question about a specific practice—in this
case,
What is the intent of
“
establishing and maintaining the plan
”
?
—you often
realize you do need to change your behavior for the good of the overall
project and organization.
6. The word “document” here does not mean an actual document (noun sense), but rather in the verb
sense that there are “bread crumbs” of some sort…documentary, or historical clues. .
