International Software Process Association (ISPA)

SP'96 - Tutorials

Who should attend

Software practitioners, change agents and software managers who desire to move their smaller organisations to higher levels of process maturity.

Goals

To provide an understanding of the problems that arise when a small organisation or small project attempts to base its process improvement initiative on the CMM.

To present examples from the LOGOS Tailored CMM that demonstrate the types of tailoring performed on the CMM that allow for the alternative practices and structures of small organisations.

To extend to the small organisation attending the tutorial the ability to apply the spirit and intent (goals and practices) of the CMM in such a way that the overhead of process improvement is proportional to its size.

Contents

The SEI's CMM for Software is a widely accepted basis for software process improvement. Unfortunately, it cannot easily be applied to small organisations and small projects whose practices and structure differ considerably from the large aerospace organisation in terms of which the CMM was designed.

LOGOS, through its work with over 200 organisations located all over the US, discovered the following major stumbling blocks in applying the CMM to small organisations and small projects: documentation overload, layered management, scope of reviews, use of resources, training costs and unrelated practices.

This tutorial addresses each of the above problem areas and provides solutions to them in the form of tailored practices found in the LOGOS Tailored CMM. The SEI has reviewed the LOGOS Tailored CMM and has granted LOGOS a copyright release to publish the document.

Benefits to those attending

Those attending will be able to return to their small organisations and use the concepts found in the Tailored CMM to advance their organisations in the same manner that large organisations are currently using the CMM to advance to higher levels of process maturity.

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