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Finally Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has release the updated version of CMMI i.e. CMMI Version 1.3. The new release contains the improvements in the complete product suite: CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV), CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ), and CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC).“Current CMMI users will find familiar content in the new version. The linkage of organizational performance management to both current and future business objectives is stronger. The three constellations can easily be adopted, used, and appraised together or separately,” said Anita Carleton, director, SEI Software Engineering Process Management Program. “And both experienced and new users will find a leaner model with more clarity.” » Read more

Q:- I am a Defect Prevention team member in our CMMI Maturity Level 5 company. We are trying to plot the Defect Removal Efficiency (DRE) metric in our projects. I have a few questions:

Our DRE is based on phase level defect injection and detection concepts. If we go closely by the definition of the phase “testing/QA”, bugs should not be injected in testing phase, as this is detection activity. If not then any examples can be useful for me to understand. Can a common DRE format can be utilized for all kinds of projects as in sustaining engineering, maintenance, development and pure testing? Specifically what do to we do for testing or pure QA type of projects? » Read more

An organization may choose to approach process improvement from either the

• Process area capability improvement approach
• Organizational maturity improvement approach

CMMI models support each approach with a representation. » Read more

Software Engineering is not considered an engineering discipline throughout the world when compared to electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and civil engineering.

Software Engineering’s brief history has been filled with problems:

• Cost overruns
• Schedule slippage
• Poor performance compared to specification
• Unsatisfied customers

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What you’ll see:

• Unclear who is authorized to make what decisions?
• Decisions are made on primarily subjective basis
• Same issue is “decided” over and over and over……
• Rationale for earlier decisions is unavailable when needed to understand the decision later in the project
• Only a few choices considered for major decisions

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What you’ll see:

• Idealistic approach that assumes “all is well” even when there is evidence that all is NOT well
• Issues that are known risks to project staff are a surprise to management
• Every time a new problem manifests, a new management technique is tried

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What you’ll see:

• Staff attending training courses they don’t need
• Staff avoiding training that is provided
• Inappropriately-skilled staff being assigned to tasks, often without knowledge of the deficiency
• Staff aren’t released to attend training they do need.

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Definition isn’t done well….. What you’ll see:

• Staff resists using the guidance in the standard processes that have been defined
• Mother of all process manuals” sits on the real (or virtual!) shelf
• Lots of time being spent getting process waivers
• Extreme amount of tailoring requested by each project.

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What you’ll see:

• Lots of staff changes in the Engineering Process Group or equivalent
• Lack of visible senior management support for process improvement activities
• The things that are chosen for improvement are not aligned with business priorities
• False starts and rocky implementations of improvement efforts.

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What you’ll see:

• Lots of user change requests before/soon after the product is released
• Arguments among the technical staff as to what the user “really” wants
• Released product doesn’t meet user expectations.

» Read more