Friday, 11:00am - 12:00am, WeH2302
Hung-jin Joo <hjoo@andrew.cmu.edu>, Jun-suk Oh <junsuko@andrew.cmu.edu>
Jim Tomayko <jet@cs.cmu.edu>, John Grasso <grasso+@cmu.edu>
Yue Zhao <yuezhao@cs.cmu.edu>
| Week | Date | Topic | Notes |
| 1 | Feb 6 - Feb 12 | CMMI and SCAMPI | |
| 2 | Feb 13 - Feb 19 | Indicator-based Appraisals and the Usage of CAM | Complete the template for CAM, due on Feb 19th |
| 3 | Feb 20 - Feb 26 | PP and PMC | |
| 4 | Feb 27 - Mar 4 | IPM, SAM, and ISM | |
| 5 | Mar 5 - Mar 11 | RSKM and IT | |
| 6 | Mar 12 - Mar 18 | OPF and OPD | |
| 7 | Mar 19 - Mar 25 | OT and OEI | |
| 8 | Mar 26 - Apr 1 | CM and PPQA | Write-up Proposal due on Apr 1st |
| 9 | Apr 2 - Apr 8 | MA and DAR | |
| 10 | Apr 9 - Apr 15 | REQM and RD | |
| 11 | Apr 16 - Apr 22 | TS and PI | |
| 12 | Apr 23 - Apr 29 | VER and VAL | |
| 13 | Apr 30 - May 6 | Final Report | Write-up due on May 9th |
Read Chapter 2 Model Components, Chapter 4 Capability Levels and Generic Model Components, and Chapter 5 Framework Interactions. From the reading, you will be clear what are Generic Goals and Generic Practices, how they are numbered, and what are the cases as of Specific Goals and Specific Practices. If you understand how Equivalent Staging works, you are fairly clear of those concepts.
Read Chapter 2 Model Components and Chapter 4 Common Features, Generic Goals, and Generic Practices. Those chapters must be familiar to you since they are similiar to those in the continuous representation. Ask yourself why there is no Common Features in the continuous representation, and why there is no GG4 or GG5 in the staged representation.
Read Part I Overview. Pay attention to the difference: discovery appraisal method vs. verification appraisal method.
Go over the slides. Identify the part you are not confident, and look back into the previous readings to refresh yourself.
Download and unzip the 45 miniute video clips. Open the file default.htm and then select 300k from the left bottom of the window. Please watch this lecture taught by Mr. John Vu from the Boeing Company. While watching, think about the following questions:
This is the actual spreadsheet for CAM. Go over each tab and try to fill in some fields to get a feeling of how it works.
Read pages III-6 to III-11, the part about Practice Implementation Indicators. Do you feel PII looks similar to CAM? Are they for the same purpose? When you re-design the CAM for CMMI, will you get some idea from the design of PII?
This is a presentation by Lookheed Martin on their practice of collect data for appraisals. Notice that the the name "CAM" is a coincidence. But you can still get some suggestions from that when you try to design the CAM for CMMI.
Work out a revised version of CAM spreadsheet so that it can apply to CMMI. Two of you work as a team and hand in a copy of that by next weekly meeting. You only need to design a template for that. You will implement each Practice Area into this template from the following week.
Read Page 190-234: Process Areas Project Planning and Project Monitoring and Control. These two PAs are really very closed related, and often appear hand by hand. PMC is performed against the Project Plan, while PMC provides input for re-planning. Seldom any organizations nowadays have no plan at all. WBS and scheduling tools are well adopted. However, breaking down the tasks and having a schedule is not PP all about. Planing involves every aspect of the project, that is why there is also a generic practice about planning. (GP2.2 Planning the Process). Can you say something about how GP2.2 and PP are related to each other? How to elaborate GP2.2 in PP? What other GPs that have special significance with respect to PP? What about PMC and GPs?
In PMC, how does progress review differ from milestone review?If I ask you to give me only one key word about PP and PMC, what word will you pick up? Why?
This is a real world case of performing planning and tracking. What are the CMMI practices can or cannot be identified in the presentation?
Implement the two PAs to your CAM template.
Read Page 253-287: Integrated Project Management for IPPD. At Maturity Level 2, Process Areas Project Planning and Project Monitoring and Control directly address issues for planning a project. At Level 3, it is the Integrated Project Management Process Area which enhances the project planning activities by integrating all plans that affect the project. But first of all, IPM requires that projects have a defined process. (So what does defined mean in CMMI?) Second, the involving of stakeholders needs to be managed (what does Project Planning Process Area say about stakeholders?) Last, if IPPD is included, the project shared vision needs to be created and integrated team structure needs to be established.
Read Page 235-252: Supplier Agreement Management and Page 328-342 Integrated Supplier Management. These two PAs are about acquisition, a much broader concept than out-sourcing or sub-contracting. For example, purchasing COTS products is a type of acquisition activities. So reviewing COTS products becomes a Specific Practice of SAM. For this reason, a lot of cases that under SW-CMM can be treated as SSM (Software Subcontract Management) not applicable can not be treated as SAM not applicable in CMMI.
ISM emphasizes relationships with suppliers that are collaborative and coordinated. ISM is not required for projects using COTS items that are generally available and that are not modified in any way. In that case the use of SAM is sufficient.
This is an instantiation of IPM. Go over briefly to have an idea on how project management was done in practice.
Implement the three PAs to your CAM template.
Read Page 288-309: Risk Management. This is a new Process Area in CMMI compared to SW-CMM. In SW-CMM, risk management was identified as a key practice in Software Project Planning, Software Project Tracking and Oversight, and Integrated Software Management. At CMM Level 2, projects identified, assessed, documented, and tracked software risks. At Level 3, projects were expected to actively manage the software risks in a more proactive and integrated fashion. So in CMMI, what are the new requirements about Risk Management? Is there any problem if you see an risk item like "cannot meet milestone"? In CMMI, RSKM belongs to Project Management category. Do you think this process area can also be used to address organizational risks?
Read Page 310-327: Integrated Teaming. This is another new process area that SW-CMM does not have. Once SW-CMM was said to be easily implemented with bureaucracy and boilerplate. With this Process Area, CMMI actually includes some of the elements that Agile methods promotes: team collaboratoin and involve customers. You will see an integrated team can include people outside the organization. Note that an "integrated team" is a CMMI term and are defined accurately. So does "relavant stakeholders". Can you explain what they mean in CMMI?
Implement the two PAs to your CAM template. If you are still working on the CAM template, you need to spend more time to catch up.
Read Page 96-133: Organizational Process Focus and Organizational Process Definition. The two Process Areas are very closely related and always work hand-by-hand. OPF is about identifying the strengths and weaknesses for the organization's processes and having a dedicated group to improve them. To do this, it involves periodical appraisals of the processes of the organization, and planing, implementing the process improvement activities based on the findings from the appraisals. While OPF is about the establishement of the organizational process assets. The five Specific Practices of SG1 (the only SG in this PA) are exactly about the five elements of Organizational Process Assets. OPF and OPD form the foundation of achieving Maturity Level 3.
Implement the two PAs to your CAM template.
Read Page 134-151: Organizational Training. Organizational Training falls into the Process Management category, which means it supports the training needs that are common across projects. The training needs about organizations standard processes are identified by OPD, while the training needs for projects are identified by PP. For those are identified as common across projects, that become organizational training needs, which are addressed by this process area. Those are only needed for a specific project are outside the scope of this process area. To satisfy OT, training needs to be planned, conducted, and measured.
Read Page 565-585: Organizational Environment for Integration. This is one of the 3 IPPD PAs. The other two are IPM for IPPD and IT. All IPPD PAs talk about Shared Vision, but at different levels. OEI requires the establishment of a shared vision for the organization, IPM for IPPD establishes a shared vision of a project, and IT establishes shared vision for integrated team. Each shared vision should be aligned with higher level vision. Creating a shared vision requires that all people in the group have an opportunity to speak and be heard about what really matters to them.
An environment for integration includes trained people, a workplace that provides the resources to maximize productivity and facilitate integrated teams, and IPPD-specific processes and assets.
Implement the two PAs to your CAM template.
Read Page 498-515: Configuration Management. This PA includes four aspects of maintaining the integrity of work products: configuration identification, configuration control, configuration status accounting, and configuration audits. The implementation of this PA relies heavily on the use of tools. Visual Source Safe, Concurrent Versions System, and Clearcase are most frequently used in software industry. Please think about the relationships between this PA and GP2.6 Manage Configurations.
This is a talk about how a company implement SCM of SW-CMM. Go over briefly and get an idea on how a company get a PA or KPA implemented.
Read Page 516-527: Process and Product Quality Assurance. In many organizations there is a group named quality assurance. But often times what the group is performing has little to do with what this PA requires, and what the group is actually doing is really about testing -- activities covered by the Verification Process Area. PPQA ensures planned processes are implemented, while VER ensures that working products satisfy specified requirements. The keyword in this PA is objective. Independent QA group is one way to achieve objectivity, but is not the only way. Also think about the relationships between this PA and GP 2.9 Objectively Evaluate Adherence.
Just go over briefly and understand what QA means under the context of CMM/CMMI
Implement the two PAs to your CAM template.
Proposal of write-up. Can be just several paragraphs about the topic, scope, and references.
Read Page 528-549: Measurement and Analysis. In the past when organizations implementing SW-CMM, there were always questions about whether or not low maturity organizations need to collect data, or how to collect data, because there was a misconception that not until level 4, organizations do not need to collect data. In CMMI, with this Process Area which is a Level 2 PA, that can be clarified. This PA is not focus on how many data an organization collects, but wheter or not an organization has the capability to collect and analyze data. Measurement itself is not the goal, instead, measure with a goal. If you have taken MSE's measurement course, and learnt GQM, you must know this already. Actually if you follow the way that was taught in the course, most possibly this PA is satisfied, or very close to be satisfied.
Read Page 550-564: Decision Analysis and Resolution. This is a self-contained process area that depends very little on other process areas and can be used to support any situation where there is critical decision and multiple alternatives. Implementing this PA does not mean every decision you need to make need to be as formal as is required by this PA. DAR applies to those decisions important and with high risk.
Implement the two PAs to your CAM template, plus VER and VAL.
Read Page 372-407: Requirements Management and Requirements Development. Although there is actually no sequence in either KPAs of SW-CMM or PAs of CMMI, Requirements Management usually appears first in many cases. This reflects that fact that Requirements are the first stage in any development life cycle. In addtion, Requirements phase is also regarded as the most critical part of a development life cycle, because requirements are forms the foundation of further development activities. Moreover, the defects in the requirements are expensive to fix and the change of requirements in the later phase is costly. On the other hand, requirements are always ambiguous and incomplete, and change often. REQM and RD are the PAs that address those issues.
REQM is different from the previous RM in SW-CMM in a couple of ways. One is that it requires maintaining a "Bidirectional Traceability of Requirements". That is, from requirements to working products and from working products back to requirements. In a volatile environment, that could be challenging. Another difference is that, RM in SW-CMM applies to "System requirements allocated to software", however, in CMMI, REQM applies to all system requirements.
RD is new in CMMI. It is about requirements collection/elicitation, analysis, specification, and verification, which are dealt with by Specific Goals and Specific Practices. Another point is that, CMMI categorized requirements into customer requirements, product requirements, and product-component requirements. To satisfy RD, evidences of each of those are required. Customer requirements are from the perspective of users, while the product and product component requirements are from the perspective of engineers.
Implement the two PAs to your CAM template, plus TS and PI.
Read Page 408 - 439: Technical Solution. Build any system involves finding a technical solution, which is usually addressed in the design phase. The point of this PA is to have alternative solutions and the design decision is the result from comparing and evaluating against alternative solutions. Alternatives do not restrict in development decisions. It could be the result of trade-off analysis of make, buy, or reuse.
Read Page 440 - 461: Product Integration. This PA covers the later phase of a development cycle: integration. A lot of times integration is achieved iteratively and incrementally. This PA is more than the activity of integration, but also covers managing internal and external interfaces of components to ensure their compatibility. Lastly, this PA also covers packaging and delivering the integrated products.
CAM: Implement rating of a whole PA, and the split and consolidation functionality.
Read Page 462 - 496: Verification and Validation. Finally we are at the last two Process Areas, and two confusing PAs, because the two PAs look similar and in industry a lot of times we use the term V&V to represent both, without clearly distinguishing the exact scope of each. Under the context of CMMI, there is an easy way to remember the distinction: Verification ensures that "you built it right" while validation ensures that "you built the right thing".
This is a presentation about Validation and Verification under the context of CMMI. From the presentation, you will understand that what customer wants does not always be what requirements specification says. Validation is then used to make sure we understand customer needs exactly.
This presentation discusses V&V under various circumstances, including CMMI's definition and IEEE's. You will see they are not the same definition.
CAM: Implement rating of a whole PA, and the split and consolidation functionality.
Last Updated: April 11, 2004