It is day 3 at the SEPG North America 2010 conference and another eventful day at the Savannah Convention Center. Osellus is here to exhibit our flagship product IRIS Process Author, a web-based process solution that enables organizations to document, tailor, publish and enact their processes.

Over the last two days we have met and talked with a lot of attendees including process improvement leads, friends of our customers, speakers, CMMI consultants and appraisers, and first timers to the conference. Whether they are here to learn, to offer services or to find solutions, everyone I have talked to shares a common sentiment – they are always looking for tools that could make their lives easier!

For instance, many of the organizations developing and improving their processes are still documenting processes the old fashioned way – in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Visio diagrams. In order to share these processes with the developers, appraisers and customers, home grown tools or SharePoint portals are commonly used to store documentations and process metrics in a central location. However, there is no easy way to filter element associations defined in a process (such as activities by roles), which makes it difficult for end users to consume large amount of information contained within the process in order to gain a clear understanding of what is required of them.

Furthermore, modifications and maintanence of these process assets are very cumbersome and require a lot of manual effort to ensure consistency. Process measurement requirements often evolve faster than the home grown tools that generate process reports to support assessment needs and evaluations.

With IRIS Process Author, process developers can

• define every process element in standardized format
• extend process element definition by adding custom attributes without vendor reconfiguration of the tool
• click-and-drop process elements to create your own process flowcharts and diagrams
• map process elements to multiple reference models (e.g., CMMI, ISO, or any proprietary procedures and standards) for compliancy
• publish processes in a consistent format and share them with all levels of users outside of the tool (no licenses required)
• view process information from multiple perspectives - by process diagram, Roles, Work Products, Disciplines and reference models
• Collaborate on process development, collect feedback and suggest improvements in a centralized process portal

Tomorrow is the last day of the conference. It has been a great experience to learn from industry leaders and fellow participants on processes improvements and desired tooling support. I look forward to meeting many more at our booth and after the conference.

Version 1.1 of the CMMI Mobile Reference is available at the Apple App Store now.

I have just submitted an update of the CMMI Mobile Reference app to the App Store.  I have fixed all the reported bugs in this minor update. I greatly appreciate all the comments, feedback, and reported errors.

I will let you know when it becomes available for download.

Process improvement encompasses process definition, as processes have to be defined and manageable before they can be improved.

This is evident in the following CMMI practices:

• OPF 1.1 Establish Organizational Process Needs
• OPF 1.2 Appraise the Orgnization’s Processes
• OPD 1.1 Establish Standard Processes
• OPD 1.2 Establish Lifecycle Model Description
• OPD 1.5 Establish the Organization’s Process Asset Library

Many times while thinking about or discussing CMMI related topics, I have difficulty recalling a particular process area, goal, or practice. I don’t always have a CMMI book or my laptop handy, but I always carry my iPhone. This got me thinking about developing a CMMI reference for iPhone that I could access at anytime.

I feel this app is useful for any iPhone owner who is into CMMI and process improvement. You can get a free copy of this application from the Apple App Store.

I had so much fun with this application that I am thinking about creating other process improvement, governance, or development methodology related apps.

I hope the process improvement community finds this app useful.

I have just completed the first draft of a white paper on Process Asset Repository System. I greatly appreciate all comments, corrections and feedbacks. You can reach me at phodaie@osellus.com.
collaborative-process-asset-repository-system.pdf

I just finished reading a white paper titled “Automating Processes for CMMI Maturity Level 3 and Beyond”. This paper argues that by using business process management (BPM) technologies you can achieve CMMI Maturity Level 3.
It is misleading and an over simplifing to state that BPM tools assist organizations in achieving CMMI Level 3.  Among other things, CMMI Level 3 requires implementation of Organizational Process Definition (OPD) and Organizational Process Focus (OPF) process areas. Both substantial organization wide undertakings and not addressed by BPM tools.
At best, BPM tools may help with some of the practices of CMMI Level 2 process areas, but they fall far short of satisfying even the CMMI Level 2 maturity or capability. As an example, these tools do not address Configuration Management (CM) process area at all. The best automation systems for CMMI Level 2 are ALM and process enactment tools.

I am working on a white paper about process asset repository systems. I should have an early draft of the paper by next week and will post it here soon.

For the last month, we have been working on an automated self-appraisal method. This effort was motivated by the need of our customers who, while realizing the necessity of appraisal for process improvement, find existing appraisal methods expensive and time consuming. These organizations have concluded that regular self-appraisals would enhance their internal process improvement programs.

Automation of appraisal method significantly reduces the cost and duration of appraisals. The other benefits of automation include objectivity, consistency, and accessibility. Objectivity is critical to any appraisal process. By definition appraisals must be objective and unbiased. Consistency across appraisals makes incremental process improvement meaningful. Accessibility democratizes the appraisal process by allowing people involved in the organization’s process improvement initiative to assess their processes, at any time, in a self-serve manner.

This appraisal method meets a subset of Appraisal Requirements for CMMI (ARC) V1.2. Although ARC defines the requirements considered essential to appraisal method intended for use with CMMI models, not all appraisal methods are expected to be fully ARC-compliant. We selected the relevant subset of ARC with the largest benefit for the effort. In future posts, I discuss these requirements in more details.

We are building the first iteration of the appraisal method on top of IRIS Process Author.

CMMI maturity level 2 and higher requires that organizations institutionalize processes so that in times of stress they are not discarded.

In an earlier post, I described how tools, such as integrated application life-cycle management (ALM) systems, and process and project portals, can substantially reduce the duration of appraisal process. Achieving institutionalization is another area where these tools are extremely beneficial.

First, ALM systems capture and automate many aspects of CMMI processes, hence, reducing the additional overhead imposed by CMMI related activities.  With minimal imposed overhead, there is much less incentives for the project team to discard the CMMI activities in times of stress.

Second, process and project portals, such as Osellus Process Central, substantially increase organization wide awareness of processes by providing central access to all organization’s standard set of processes (OSSP) and project-specific process, as well as, provide a forum where these processes are discussed by all.  Overtime, this result in processes becoming a part of the fabric of the organization and ingrained in project teams. It is unlikely that such teams would abandon processes in times of stress.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that one my favorite CMMI phrase is “Say what you do; Do what you say; Prove it”. The “prove it” part of this phrase is especially important during the Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI) A.  SCAMPI A provides maturity rating, and traditionally in preparation for it an organization spends hundreds (in some cases thousand) of tedious hours compiling, verifying and cataloging paper-based compliance evidence.

An integrated application lifecycle management (ALM) system, such as Microsoft VSTS, substantially reduces this burden by digitizing the majority of the required evidence, and making it accessible from a single portal (SharePoint in the case of VSTS). This portal goes beyond paper-based documents. It provides bi-directional traceability and search functionality. Moreover, the generation of the evidence documentation is automated.

In a very interesting case, an organization, utilizing VSTS, was able of to achieve CMMI maturity level 2 in an six months.

As a side note.  I strongly believe that CMMI is not just for the organization who intend to get an official rating.  Any organization, regardless of size, can greatly benefit from CMMI best practices.  These best practices are the result of over a decade work by some of the industries best minds.  They are quantitatively improved and empirically validated.  I feel, this has much more merit than unverified (latest fad) concepts introduced by methodology theorists.

My advice is not to view CMMI not just as a certification mechanism, rather adopt parts of CMMI that are relevant and beneficial to your organization.