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10.7 Supporting Small Changes in Business: The Two
Sides of Tailoring and Criteria
I mentioned earlier in this topic that one reason my client NANO 3 might not
be doomed is that the CMMI level 5 organization trying to take their busi-
ness away takes three times as long and costs twice as much as my client
does.
One question I received from the initial reviews of this manuscript was why
high CMMI mature organizations tend to have higher costs and longer
schedules than would seem to be warranted, and if this needs to be so. My
immediate response was:
No, it doesn't need to be so and this was part of why I wrote this topic.
In the beginning of this topic, I talked about the tendency to read things into
the CMMI model that are not really there, thus creating non-value-added
work. But this doesn't account for all the cost and schedule inefficiencies I
have observed. Let me give you an example.
I have heard the following comment made by a CMMI lead appraiser, which
on the surface sounds positive and accurate:
This organization is clearly CMMI level 3 because we saw the evidence of
projects using the organization's common assets through the use of a com-
mon project planning template and the use of a standard approach to
estimate work products and task attributes.
This same lead appraiser raised a concern about the direct evidence pro-
vided by one project with respect to the Project Planning Specific Practice 1.2:
Establish estimates of work products and task attributes.
The comment made was that the evidence provided was:
“Too project unique,” and the lead appraiser wanted to see more evidence
that the project estimated using the “company standard approach.”
Now admittedly, this is a balancing act.
To a c h i e v e a C M M I l e v e l 3 , y o u n e e d t o a d e q u a t e l y a d d re s s Generic Practice
3.1 , which tells us we need to :
3. Refer to Chapter 6 for the NANO case study.
 
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