There are a lot of defects in the 6 major monsters behind the CMMI certificate

What else does the company do after the CMMI certificate has been handed?

The CMMI certification has made great contribution to the healthy development of China's software industry in the past more than 10 years. But some software companies simply take the certificate as the fundamental purpose, and forget the CMMI certification is the starting point is to improve the software production process.

This led to some of our country through the CMMI5 level of the project average delay rate is still above 25%, and the data is not stable. It is particularly unfortunate that there is no publicly available data indicating that our country has improved production efficiency, reduced costs and improved product quality through CMMI High level certification enterprises.

Is Cmm/cmmi a great classic in the field of process improvement in China or a theory that failed because of acclimatized? How will the software Process Improvement after CMMI be interpreted?

CMMI (Capability Maturity Model integration, the Capability maturity Models integration model) since its introduction to China in the mid 1990s, some software companies have just blindly pursued a high level of CMMI certification, To get a more advanced CMMI certificate is to obtain an international passport to the outsourcing market, while ignoring the real continuous improvement of the software production process. This has led to some worrisome phenomena in China from CMMI Certification.

Strange Phase One: Certificate pendulum desktop system put aside

2006 I went to a software park to investigate, through the CMMI assessment of the 8 enterprises to visit, found that 5 enterprises in the assessment after the basic abandonment. The certificate of CMMI Evaluation hangs high on the wall, the personnel doing the process improvement have disappeared, and the enterprise is no longer carried out according to the original system. In fact, these 5 companies do not want to really improve the process. So why do you have to do CMMI evaluation? Because companies have subsidies.

2000, the relevant departments to encourage software enterprises to do CMMI assessment. Many local enterprises to encourage the implementation of process improvement, and the introduction of funding policies. When an enterprise has passed an assessment, it can receive funding from different departments. Some enterprises in order to get funding, surprise through the CMMI evaluation, so there has been a "certificate on the desktop, the system put aside" phenomenon.

In fact, the enterprise miscalculated. Most of the funding that companies receive is given to consulting firms. In order to prepare the direct and indirect evidence of the system documents and projects, the enterprise should arrange the personnel to receive the interview. This will cost a lot of human and material resources, its costs may exceed the amount of subsidy, so the actual investment of enterprises is also very large. What do the companies that want to subsidize get? An estimate of their usefulness is left with a certificate.

Strange Phase two: certificate to get hand system major repair

The author has contacted two enterprises, after the adoption of CMM or CMMI evaluation, in a very short period of time on the process system has been significantly cut. One of the company's head said: "The original set of the system is too cumbersome, in order to pass the assessment, we have endured, now must be cut!" "Is it only cumbersome to pass the CMMI assessment?" Is simplicity impossible to pass the CMMI assessment?

This is a misunderstanding of CMMI!

In the various components of CMMI, only the goal is necessary, the practice is expected and the child practice is explained. So first of all, to meet the requirements of each goal in the model, the achievement of the goal is based on the implementation of the practice to judge, the model given by the practice can be replaced. As long as you can achieve your goal, you can use any practice.

The CMMI assessment requires that the Director evaluator must have more than 10 years of software engineering experience, members of the evaluation team must have an average of more than 6 years of engineering experience, the evaluation team accumulated not less than 25 engineering experience, each life cycle phase of two people have practical experience, at least one member has more than 6 years of management experience, The evaluation team should have more than 10 years management experience. These requirements are in fact to better professional judgment, to avoid mechanical copying.

The CMMI requires the enterprise to establish a tailoring guide. In practice, the tailoring guide is often more important than the system itself. Rigid system can not really be carried out in the organization, to maintain the flexibility and agility of the system, you must define a detailed, practical cutting guide, and gradually improve in practice.

Simplicity and cumbersome are likely to meet the requirements of the model, the key depends on the drafting of the system's understanding of the model. When the enterprise starts to import CMMI, in general, please consult the consultant to intervene, and the current domestic CMMI consulting company, Consulting consultants, a mixed bag, customers difficult to make a correct evaluation in a short time, often rely on some websites or associations, such as the recommendations of independent organizations, according to the election of the "consulting companies ranked list" netizens. If consultants do not understand the model deeply, their own process to improve the members of the lack of experience, or consultants involved in a small amount of work, it will inevitably be strange.

Strange phase Three: the duration is still dragging defects as much as usual

After the implementation of the CMMI to a certain stage, EPG complained about the problem of leadership awareness, leadership in the behavior of the process to improve the support of the strength is not enough. But the leadership said that the authorization is also authorized, the reward also rewarded, the punishment is also punished, but the project is still in tow period, still exist quality problems, it is believed that the EPG did not solve the core problem.

Where exactly is the problem?

The purpose of process improvement can be summed up as "many, fast, good, province": More, that is, the project team can meet the needs of customers more and better, enterprises can undertake projects more the better; fast, that is, can improve the enterprise's estimation ability, adaptability, so that the project can be completed on schedule, reduce the phenomenon of delay; Well, that is, to improve the quality of delivery, Reduce the amount of after-sale maintenance, the province, that is, reduce the cost of project development, improve the profitability of enterprises.

For different enterprises, the focus may be different in the above 4 objectives. When the implementation process improvement, must tightly around the enterprise's improvement goal work, aims at the enterprise leadership attention the question, the enterprise weakest Link implementation improvement, such can have the multiplier effect quickly, otherwise see the actual result, any management method will not be long, any leadership also will not continue to invest.

In many cases, the enterprise found the root of the problem in process improvement, but failed to find an effective solution. For example, unit testing and code walking is an effective measure to improve the quality of software, has been fully recognized in the engineering sector, but in software production enterprises to promote, often encounter the obstruction of developers. Developers will think that doing unit testing and code walking waste a lot of time, it is better to do black box function test easier. The best practices recognized in the industry may not be implemented in the enterprise. This requires the EPG members to take various means to make the best practices in these industries the best practices of the enterprise. The above mentioned EPG and the corporate leadership of the mutual complaints between the problem, to a large extent attributed to this.

Strange phase four: Document an article don't see anyone

There is a software manufacturing enterprise that has passed the CMMI3 level assessment to complete a project requiring the project team to fill in nearly 90 documents. When I do the CMMI gap Analysis, I find that there are a lot of obvious mistakes in those documents. But these documents also to the project manager, QA personnel and senior executives and other roles to see, but no one found these obvious mistakes. In fact, these people did not go to see these documents! Since no one is going to read it, why write it?

The CMMI assessment requires the enterprise to provide 3 kinds of evidence: direct evidence, indirect evidence and witness. Every practice must have direct evidence. The direct evidence includes the output document, the tools used, and so on. Since direct evidence is necessary, many companies have done hundreds of documents to meet the needs of the model, which is not true. The model is to emphasize direct evidence, but not the more documents the better. The document is only used to prove that a practice you have done, as long as you have achieved this purpose. and a document can meet the requirements of many practices, can be used as a number of practical evidence, this is the most economical way. As long as the content is there, it does not care about the number and format of the document.

Before the CMMI is implemented, the project team often does not write documents or write documents, and when the CMMI is implemented, there may be too many written documents-this is two extremes and needs to be balanced.