Information Technology Reference
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a whiteboard. It is also important to capture the terminology used by the
group members.
I have seen TWG leads who decided on their own to “translate” the termi-
nology the group members were using in a working session into “CMMI
terminology,” thinking this was part of their responsibility. This is definitely
a mistake and should be guarded against.
LESSON 4
Keep your processes in your organization's terminology. Don't try to translate
into “CMMI terminology.”
The reason for this lesson is really a variant of Lesson 2 in Chapter 2. The
CMMI is not a set of dictated practices, and is not intended to dictate termi-
nology. When we say it is a tool to help you reason about your processes, this
means to reason about your terminology as well. It is therefore fine to discuss
and raise potential issues about the right terminology in your organization.
If a term is being used by some inappropriately, this should be discussed.
Keep in mind our primary purpose is to “extract” the real process that is
used first, and this includes extracting the real terminology used.
In the case when I observed a TWG lead “translating” the terms the group
used, it caused a significant buy-in problem during the deployment stage of
the project. This occurred because the TWG members felt the lead hadn't lis-
tened to them, and members said they didn't even recognize the process that
resulted from the TWG effort as being the process they actually used and dis-
cussed in the working group. Don't let this happen to your process
improvement efforts. TWG leader's responsibilities are primarily facilita-
tion, listening, and documenting.
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4.20 What Do You Do When You Find a Gap?
A second gap analysis against the CMMI model is conducted offline by the
TWG lead after the initial sorting out of the notes from the TWG session and
creation of the initial draft Process and Guidelines documents.
When a gap is found, it usually becomes a topic for a follow-on TWG session
where the group is also reviewing and commenting on the draft process and
17. The subject of terminology is also discussed in the NANO case study in Chapter 6.
