• Upper Management Sponsorship - This is necessary for most major projects, but if it's not available or begins to diminish, then a grass roots effort may be successful, but will take a longer time.
• Processes - Need to determine whether to develop processes in-house or to buy them from other companies/consultants and tweak them as needed.
• Training - The panel acknowledged that some organizations had a great deal of training while others did not. There was agreement that once processes are rolled out and implemented, it's important to ensure that teams using the new processes are trained.
• Pilot Projects - It's important to pilot the new processes to ensure they work properly and do not negatively impact other processes or organizations.
• Feedback and Review - Throughout the CMM implementation projects, panel members have seen feedback and reviews happen in both a very structured format from each department head to no feedback whatsoever.
• Mentoring - It is imperative that some type of mentoring/coaching be in place to ensure processes become institutionalized.
• Audits - Again, these are needed to ensure institutionalization of the processes.
• Realistic Target - It's important to set realistic targets/goals. For example, Level 2, then Level 3.
• Culture - Never underestimate the impact of culture. Take great care in determining the size and approach of implementing CMM that makes sense for the organization.

The question was raised about organizations having a target to achieve a certain level of compliance versus a quality goal.

• A level of compliance with CMM does not ensure quality.
• An organization can be Level 2, but that does not guarantee good processes. Level 2 is about processes being repeatable, not about the quality of the processes.
• A CMM assessment is just a snapshot in time and does not guarantee that an organization will stay at that level.
• Many organizations backslide quickly after attaining a certain level of CMM, as early as they day after.
• In order to ensure organizations maintain a level of compliance, they must have a process for corrective action, a feedback loop, measures, etc., all the things necessary for process improvement.

• Need to understand the motivations for implementing CMM and the associated costs. In other words, it's not about achieving a certain level of compliance, but to improve quality, decrease costs, etc. It's important to do a Cost Benefit Analysis as well for the project.
• Measures need to be collected throughout the project. The measures need to have valid baselines with consistency across organizations. These measures are necessary in order to do process improvement. Start with a few measures of actuals vs. estimates. For example:

Schedule with milestones

Effort

Defects (in production)

Size

• SQA (Software Quality Assurance) is instrumental in getting people to change their behavior (culture change). SQA should include both auditing and advice to teams. When a process is first implemented, an organization may want to do weekly checks on adherence and then scale back over time.
• Training classes are helpful as a starting point, but they need to be followed by ongoing mentoring and coaching.
• It's important to have process champions/owners and SQA resources.

SPEAKER: Experienced Panel

This meeting consisted of a panel of those experienced in implementing CMM (Capability Maturity Model). Each of the panel members have experience with a number of different companies across a variety of industries.