Suzanne Garcia

How standards enable adoption of project management practice

Standards affect the adoption of project management practices in three areas: deployment of practices in an organization, customer-supplier relationships, and the community of project management practitioners.

Evolving improvement paradigms: capability maturity models and ISO/IEC 15504 (PDTR)

This paper describes the evolution of the structure and representation of Capability Maturity Modelssm and various components of the ISO/IEC 15504 (PDTR) product set, formerly known as ‘SPICE’ (Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination). ‘15504’ will be used as shorthand for the product set encompassed by the 15504 project. The paper focuses on historical, structural, and conceptual evolution of the two product types.

Capability Maturity ModelingSM at the SEI

In 1987, the SEI released a software process maturity framework and maturity questionnaire to support organizations in improving their software process. Four years later, the SEI released the Capability Maturity ModelSM for Software (SW-CMMSM). The SW-CMM has influenced software process improvement worldwide to a significant degree. More recently, the SEI has become involved in developing additional capability maturity models that impact software. This paper discusses the problems these CMMs are trying to address, our goals in developing these CMMs, the objectives and status of each of these models, and our current plans for the 1996–1997 time frame. We then briefly turn to topics that address the usability of the SW-CMM in certain situations: in small organizations and in challenging application domains. We then describe SEIs involvement in an international standards effort to create a standard for software process assessment. Finally, to gain perspective on how the CMMs might impact the community in the future, we look at the growing use of the SW-CMM and some benefits associated with its use.

Enterprise architecture for complex system-of-systems contexts

An enterprise architecture is an accepted, widely used means for an organization to capture the relationship of its business operations to the systems and data that support them. Increasingly, enterprises are participating in complex system-of-systems contexts in order to meet changing customer demands that require them to collaborate with other enterprises in new and innovative ways. For a complex system-of-systems context, a shortcoming of enterprise architecture is that it presumes a single enterprise or a single, ultimate source of control. This paper explores an approach to reasoning about distributed collaboration in the complex system-of-systems, multi-enterprise context, in which this single, ultimate source of control does not exist. It outlines the ways in which the long-used Zachman Framework for enterprise architecture would need to be modified to account for multi-enterprise collaboration and decentralized governance. It proposes a concept of stratification to meet this need and puts forward the main characteristics of the methods needed to model the stratified relationships of complex systems-of-systems to their contexts-of-use.

Bringing COTS Information Technology into Small Manufacturing Enterprises

Due to increasing competitive pressure, many small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) are considering COTS software technology improvements to increase productivity. However, SMEs are generally not as prepared to bring COTS software technology into their company as are medium and large organizations. SMEs face unique COTS issues due to organizational constraints, limited interaction with vendors and a passive role (in terms of technology and business process) in the manufacturing supply chain. This report describes these unique SME COTS software challenges as observed in several hands-on technology demonstrations conducted over a two-year period as part of the SEI Technology Insertion Demonstration & Evaluation (TIDE) program.

Managed Technology Adoption Risk: A Way to Realize Better Return from COTS Investments

Two companies can install the same COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software package, yet one company enjoys more success, and a better return, than the other. Needless to say, many factors could be involved in this common scenario. Yet, chances are, one of the factors is that the successful company actively managed the non-technical aspects of the adoption of the COTS software adoption, instead of just selecting it and installing it. What is the difference? According to technology transition researchers, “installed” means that the system is operational; however, only a few people use the software as intended (or at all!) [Fichman1995]. “Adopted” means that the system is operational, and employees are using it in the way that was intended to support the business need that led to the COTS adoption to begin with. Every organization exhibits different risks for adopting a particular technology, and whether and how those risks are managed often determine whether adoption is achieved, vs merely achieving installation. Managing adoption, especially managing adoption risk, actually starts before acquiring any technology and continues after installation.

Leveraging leadership lessons from software process improvement efforts for architecture leadership & management

There are many behavioral themes related to leadership and management for architecture practice. This paper deals primarily with leadership in terms of responsibilities for sponsoring improved architectural practice, leveraging from at least two decades of work that has been done in the more general software process improvement community. In addition to a discussion of relevant sponsorship practices and leverage points for leaders, the paper includes an annotated bibliography of selected resources that come from the reference section of the authors book, CMMI Survival Guide: Just Enough Process Improvement. The annotations help readers to understand how the leadership literature that is not specifically aimed at them can be of benefit to their efforts.

Tutorial 1: Modeling Key Dynamics in Complex Systems (of Systems) Environments: Foundational Concepts

The transition from systems that provide a pre-defined product to ongoing relationships that focus on supporting dynamically changing customer needs over time is moving suppliers from a product-delivery mode to one in which through-life capability management is expected. Appropriately modeling both supply and demand provides participants in this context with a richer understanding of risks and risk mitigations associated with their delivery strategy. This tutorial presents foundational concepts for modeling approaches along with a number of modeling techniques that address different aspects of customer-supplier relationships in dynamic environments.