Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
All of these situations lead us to a question:
Are these process problems (often due to common causes), or people problems
(often assignable)?
3.16 Insight
In my experience, most often the root cause for broader problems turns out
to be a mix of both. The process is never perfect, nor are the people.
INSIGHT
We need to take appropriate action to minimize the likelihood
of the problem recurring. Often this means combining process improve-
ment with additional mentoring and/or training for people.
Historically, many organizations
who have implemented CMMI level
4 and 5 practices have spent signifi-
cant effort distinguishing these
categories of problems. The reason
these insights are important is
because they tell us that
Agile
tech-
niques can help us attain the intent
of many of the CMMI level 4 and 5
practices by executing them in an
integrated
way, rather than by trying
to artificially separate them.
Pause, Reflect, and Glance Forward
It might be worth pausing at this point
to reflect on whether what we have
seen in the Procurement case study
reflects a pattern at LACM. We heard
that “sometimes the hardware doesn't
get ordered on time.” If true, is it
always due to an inexperienced pro-
curement specialist, or could there be
other causes as well? If we could char-
acterize the conditions that lead to
common undesirable situations, is it
also possible there are actions we
could take to avoid such patterns from
coming back? We will continue to
explore the concept of repeating pat-
terns as we move deeper into the
topic. And we will explore what you
can do to detect such situations and
keep them from coming back.
Examples of What We Did to
Help Resolve the Problems
Specifically, in our case study, we
provided the procurement specialist
with some immediate
on-the-job
guidance
explaining
alternative
solu-
tions that could have been made. For
example, instead of just placing the
procurement requisition to the side
on his desk when he didn't know
