Bringing Process Maturity to an R&D Culture - Integrating CMMI and Agile Development - page 180

subject matter expert's time. Another advantage is more integrated process
definitions that fit the way people really work in the organization. Yet
another is better communication of the issues between departments in the
organization. Communication between departments had been identified as a
weakness during the GEAR gap analysis. Refer to Table 7-1.
Table 7-1 Advantages to Thread Approach to Process Development and Deployment
More effective use of key people's time
More integrated processes that fit with the way people work
Improved communication between departments
Improved support for rapid process deployment
Earlier training
Earlier process validation
Disadvantages include sometimes needing to have more people in a work-
ing group than is desirable. Too many people can slow progress. When you
are talking about issues that cross from requirements, development, and into
test, and your organization has distinct departments for each of these tradi-
tional functions, more people might need to be involved in the discussions
than is sometimes desirable.
Another potential disadvantage is the difficulty in planning a working group
in a way that effectively uses the time of all the working group members.
Because you don't always know ahead of time when using the thread
approach where a given meeting's discussions might lead, some people
might end up feeling their participation was not of value.
I wouldn't recommend the thread approach in an organization that hadn't
previously given their processes considerable thought. You need to be at a
level of maturity to discuss and develop integrated processes . However, if the
organization is mature, this is a more efficient and effective approach to
process development and deployment than isolating working group discus-
sions based on the CMMI model Process Areas.