CMMI® – Constellations, Representations and some food for thought

In presentations, training or orientation sessions on CMMI® the topic of constellations and representations does come up for discussions (even if the presenter wants to avoid it ). I have in the past, found that the standard material on these topics has not always helped people understand and remember the concepts. The people, who I believed understood the concepts, surprised me later with a question or a comment that indicated otherwise. Till the time I hit upon an analogy that is easy to understand and easier to remember. And it is related to food.

I will use the example of a restaurant called Celesti-yummi^NYTM (the restaurant owner fancies it as trans-galactic gastronomic delight). It has a menu that features three kitchens – food representing three different regions of the universe. One from the Devphinus constellation, another from the Severus constellation and the third from the Aquirius constellation.

Each constellation (kitchen) serves a set of dishes – Devphinus has 22 dishes, Severus serves 24 dishes and Aquirius presents 22 dishes. These are all listed in Celesti-yummi^NYTM menu card. Each kitchen-constellation has also created a recipe booklet that is publicly available, for free (however, fancy, bound versions are priced). People and outer-world aliens can use the recipe books to prepare the dishes, as long as they keep acknowledging the intellectual property and trademark ownership of Celesti-yummi^NYTM.

(Digression: There may be another category of sapient beings called “earthly aliens”, since immigration counters in some airports have separate queues for such creatures. When I stand in such queues, I hope to quickly complete the formalities before someone like Ellen Ripley notices me. For more information on Ellen Ripley and how she handles Alien species, see the Wikipedia page here. : End of Digression)

Let us now examine the menu card of Celesti-yummi^NYTM. As explained before, each kitchen-constellation has a list of dishes (22 to 24 dishes). Each dish comes in three sizes – Small (CL1), Medium (CL2), and Large (CL3). From a kitchen, you may choose any number of the dishes, and specify the size of each dish (small, medium or large). This kind of order, for some reason, is called a “continuous” order by Celesti-yummi^NYTM (which many restaurants call as an al-a-carte order), though there is nothing continuous about it.

In addition to the 22 to 24 dishes offered in 3 sizes, each kitchen-constellation also offers fixed meals (pre-plated meals or thalis).  There is a mini-meal (ML2), a midi-meal (ML3), a maxi-meal (ML4) and a mega-meal (ML5) that you can order from each kitchen. These fixed meals have a pre-decided set of dishes (a sub-set of the 22 to 24 dishes) at pre-decided sizes, with some very small variations. These fixed meals are called “Staged” meals.

For example, if you order the mini-meal (ML2) from the Devphinus kitchen menu you will get seven dishes, all of the medium (CL2) size. You have no choice in the matter. The only exception is for the dish called “Sammy’s Fav” which you can decline, provided you have a doctor’s certificate that you are allergic to some of the ingredients. You cannot decline any other dish. Nor can you change the size of the dishes if you order a fixed meal. Similarly the midi-meal (ML3) from Devphinus, will contain eighteen dishes, all of the Large (CL3) size. Again, you can decline the dish called Sammy’s Fav, with a doctor’s certificate. The mega-meal (ML5) from Devphinus will see a large platter with all their 22 dishes (and, you can still decline Sammy’s Fav, with appropriate justification).

There are similar fixed meals with minor variations in the other two kitchen-constellations.

One warning – there are dishes with same or similar names offered by the three kitchen-constellations. Some are called “core” dishes and some are called “shared” dishes. Don’t be fooled by the names and the terminology. They taste significantly different (because of the way they are cooked, raw material, and interaction with the other dishes), though they are called by the same/ similar names. For example, the dish called “Risque-Salad” (offered by all the three kitchen and hence called a core dish) will look and taste significantly different, becuase of the ingradients, presentation, and seasoning.

There ends the explanation of constellations, representations (staged/ continuous),  core/shared PAs, ML/CL, etc.

Please feel free to add your variation and flavour to this explanation (use the comment feature)

Other related posts uploaded on the same blog:

• Institutionalization in CMMI® and People CMM®: Converting a practice to a habit
• Extreme Process Tailoring and Mapping – How much is Reasonable? (Story of a Pizzeria)

®-CMMI and CMM are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.

^NYTM- Celesti-yummi is Not Yet Trade Marked

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Institutionalization in CMMI® and People CMM®: Converting a practice to a habit

The word “institutionalization” is a mouthful, a tongue twister. If it was a requirement that every employee be able to pronounce word correctly for a successful appraisal result (for CMMI®/ People CMM®), the number of successfully appraised entities would have been far fewer than what they are now .

The concept of institutionalization is explicitly embedded in the CMMI® and People CMM® models. In fact, approximately half the practices in every one of the models are dedicated to institutionalization, so it is necessary to internalize this concept to successfully implement the models.

So, what is institutionalization? It is many related things, but the easiest and the most comprehensive explanation is that it is “making a practice into a habit”. Hence, when a practice (like submitting monthly project status reports to all stakeholders by the 5^th of every month) becomes a habit with the organization, we can say that the practice is “institutionalized”. Organizations are not born with habits (nor are human beings). So, how do some practices become habits? Or more importantly, what can we do to make certain desirable practices into habits?

Let us use an example at a personal level to understand what we can do to convert a desirable practice into a habit.

You are overweight. You are unfit. You get tired before you climb one flight of stairs. (You get the picture.) Your doctor has advised more exercise (than just using the TV remote). He has been telling this to you for the last few years; you make a New Year resolution every year, which does not last more than a few days. This year your doc has given you some kind of ultimatum “shape up or else!”

So, now you not only want to lose those excess kilograms (1 kilogram = approximately 2.2 Pounds, for those who still resist the metric system ), but want to make regular exercise a habit. Here is a combination of things that is will increase the probability of regular exercise become a habit.

Firstly, as an individual you need to build up a great amount of motivation to achieve fitness. The motivation needs to be higher than your motivation for “one more helping”, “15 minutes more of watching the TV”, etc. You need a deep conviction, an inner resolution, a personal commitment, a personal vision/ policy, an oath to oneself. Something like, “come what may, I will do the required exercises at least 25 days in a month.”

Next, you will have to study the alternatives that are available – should you join a gym? Should you join a batch at the gym, or be on your own? Should you go to the gym in the morning or evening? Should have a different exercise program every day? Should the weekend be different? Based on the initial investigation and thinking, you will make a high level plan.

Let us say, you decide to join a batch of people like you in a neighborhood gym. The batch meets every morning at 6 AM and is led by 2 instructors. Now you need money to enroll in the gym and the program. You will need the right set of clothes and shoes. And many such resources, including time; time to reach the gym, time to do the exercise and time to go back home (or wherever) after the program every day.

To free you up for the daily gym sessions, new responsibilities will need to be taken up, and existing responsibilities may have to be redistributed. Who will drop the kids to school? Who will wake you up? Who is going to water the plants? Who will wash the car now? If you are going to reach your workplace later by half an hour every day, who will stand in for you for that half an hour? In addition to assigning the responsibilities, you (along with others) will possibly need to rearrange and plan out many other impacted activities.

Let us get back to the daily gym. The instructors will have a standard process that they have chalked out to for the group. Based on your situation they may tweak the standard to define a tailored process/ program for you.

The instructors will be constantly watching, coaching and guiding you to make sure that you don’t overdo it or take it too easy. They will also try to ensure that you don’t hurt yourself. So, they will keep providing you necessary training as you progress.

On a regular basis you will have to keep track of some important items related to your daily gym-ing. For example, you need to make sure that you have shoes and sock and tee-shirts and shorts washed at the right time. Your gym membership card/ usage may have to kept safe and updated on a regular basis. Basically, you will need to maintain control of the important items, so that you don’t end up picking up someone else’s gym bag.

When you start and as you progress, various stakeholders will have to be identified and involved to the required degree. For example your spouse/ partner, others at home, the gym instructors, your doctor, and maybe your co-workers.

You will have to maintain data of your progress – how much time you spent on the treadmill, when you moved from level 1 of the exercise chart to level 2, how many days you could not attend the gym. You would also be keep track on the impact of the work that you are doing – are you losing weight? Too fast? Too slow? Do you feel energetic? Tired? The basic idea is to collect data to monitor the status and effects and control the actions to achieve better results.

To maintain motivation, you could pair up with a buddy in the gym group – where each of you can objectively help the other to maintain adherence to the plan, schedule and actions. In addition to your buddy, the instructors will also be checking out that you are basically following the processes and the plans that have been laid out.

Once in a while, you would be going to your doc and reviewing the status, so that long-term course corrections can be identified (e.g., add a diet program, increase aerobics- reduce weight bearing exercises, etc.).

The gym staff would collect improvement feedback from the participants to change their equipment, standard programs, etc. For the next batch they may define a slightly different process because of this feedback.

All the bold-and-underlined elements are the likely to prevent you from slipping back to your old ways, and with time, doing exercises every day is likely to become a habit, or “institutionalized” for you.

In a nutshell, here are the 12 elements:

1. Having a policy/ vision
2. Creating plans
3. Mobilizing resources
4. Assigning responsibilities
5. Getting the training to develop skills required
6. Keeping conscious control of key items
7. Involving various stakeholders
8. Monitoring the status/ effects and controlling the actions
9. Keeping an eye on adherence to the process
10. Having periodic reviews with the key stakeholders
11. Appropriately adopting a process for a given situation
12. Collecting information to drive improvements

The analogy used may not directly fit an organizational situation. In the above example, the vision needs to be set by the same person who is taking the action, whereas in an organization, it will be the leadership team that sets the policy and many more people who follow it. Similarly, resources will need to be mobilized by leadership team or some specific groups in the organization, and used by all groups. However, the principles are similar, and if an organization keeps track of the above 12 aspects, there is a high likelihood that whatever is being introduced will quickly become a habit with the organization.

By the way, the word “institutionalization” also means being admitted to a mental institution, but that is not the context we are discussing here, today .

Please do share your experiences, comments and feedback by posting a reply/ comment.

Other related posts uploaded on the same blog:

• CMMI® – Constellations, Representations and some food for thought
• Extreme Process Tailoring and Mapping – How much is Reasonable? (Story of a Pizzeria)

®-CMMI and CMM are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.

Hi,

If you like the posts on this blog and would like to be informed whenever a new entry is made, here is what you can do:

• Scroll back to the top of the page
• On the right hand side there is section called “FollowBlog via Email”
• In the space provided, type in your email id and click on the “Follow Blog” button (give your personal id, since companies often block wordpress)
• You will get an email at that email id
• In the email there is a clickthrough link – click on it and complete the formalities

Adoption of People CMM® -03: Why is it Low?

In a previous post titled Adoption of People CMM® – 01: Appraisal Results, we looked at the reported appraisal data and realized that the number of reported appraisals in any given year hovers between five and ten. There may be a few appraisals that are not reported. Even factoring in the unreported appraisals, the number of appraisals is still low.

However, some people argue that number of appraisals is not equal to the number of organizations adopting the model. Many organizations claim to have adopted People CMM® without undergoing an appraisal (“we are not interested in certification”, is a common refrain).

Yes, there are a few of such organizations too. And some of them have seriously adopted the model.

But in many such cases, they just pick and choose what is convenient and comfortable and ignore the rest of the model saying “it does not make bussssinessss sense”. The whole exercise ends up with an internally produced document where some of the People CMM® requirements are mapped with the organization’s current practices. Other inconvenient People CMM® practices (that may have been useful) are marked with “not suitable in our context”. This makes the organizations smug (“in principle we are maturity level x”). The fun starts when someone says, “then let us go get our level x”. Then they call in external experts, and realize how far they are from the desired level.

Coming back to the reasons for the low adoption of People CMM®.

The most important reason is that there is no external pressure, unlike in the case of CMMI® or ISO. Customers normally do not ask vendors whether they are appraised to the People CMM®. Even if an organization does get itself appraised once, there is no pressure for re-appraisals.

The listing of People CMM® on PARS is a good move, as it creates peer pressure.

The lack of awareness of the model is another important reason. Not many people know about the model. The knowledge is restricted to a few folks (process engineers and quality professionals in IT companies) already familiar with the SEI and the CMM® models. Most CEOs and HR heads are totally unaware of it. There is almost no mention of People CMM® in journals like HBR, nor is it discussed in conferences related to Business Excellence or Human Capital Management.

Most people who are aware of the framework mentally tag it as a model for the IT/ SW industry. There is almost no practice in the model that aligns it to any specific industry. Organizations in the banking, hospitality, engineering, and manufacturing have found it as useful as IT companies. (However, the model document also has too many references to the software industry in the first few sections that contain information about the background and genesis of the model – this is likely to have reinforced the perception of its IT centricity. Maybe the authors can do something about it in the next version).

In many companies, the current organizational structure does not enable any group in the company to easily take up the initiative – so it is nobody’s baby. It has been repeated multiple times that “it is not a HR model” – this message has unintended consequences – HR is reluctant to take it up as an initiative. But to cross maturity level 2, HR has to take an active part. Process engineering groups will usually not champion for People CMM® because (1) they have other headaches , like CMMI®, ISO 20K, ISO 27K, etc., and (2) they don’t want to intrude into HR territory.

Based on the set of organizations that have implemented the model (known to the writer),  the People CMM® initiative has been taken either by the HR head or the CEO. And CEOs usually have many other things on their plate. We should stop emphasizing “it is not a HR model”.

Most organizations are now perpetually going from one certification (audit/ appraisal/ assessment) to another causing appraisal fatigue – each model has a 1-3 year re-appraisal/ surveillance cycle. Even the thought of picking up another long-term initiative seems to exhaust them. People CMM® is put on the backburner, “to be picked up when we have more time”.

Repeated economic slowdowns in the last few years have made companies postpone their People CMM® initiative. Who wants a model to “attract and retain” people when organizations are trying to do “right-sizing” every two years?

Lack of adoption feeds on itself – the question often asked is “if People CMM® is so great, why haven’t more organizations adopted it? Even after so many years”?

Many companies fear that the appraisal results may provide fodder for litigation by disgruntled employees (this is true in countries prone to litigations). For example, a finding that, “there is no structured mechanism for handling employee grievances” can be used by litigating employees to strengthen their case against the organization.

{<Start of Digression>: The pre-SCAMPI^SM version of the People CMM® assessment method had a step for “review by legal” before presenting the final findings. An impasse with the legal team on the wordings of some finding could mean that the assessment was abandoned before the final findings. There is no such explicit requirement in the SCAMPI^SM method <End of Digression>}.

In many organizations, HR is uncomfortable with the concepts of process engineering, data analytics and the possible transparency that People CMM® is likely to bring about. HR also lacks program management experience and skills to run long-term, organization-wide programs like People CMM®.

Large consulting firms have a vested interest in their clients not implementing People CMM®. Consulting firms have their own proprietary methodologies and tools to implement competency definitions, salary restructuring, right sizing, role rationalization, and so on. They not only set up the framework, but also provide consultants (usually fresh MBAs) for execution. These are huge contracts, and cyclical in nature, locking the client organization perpetually. Implementing People CMM® actually frees up the clients from these huge contracts, as the organization realizes that it can do a better job of the setting up and changing the people related processes (using internal staff), than handing over the job to expensive consultants.

The model is not easy reading – it is heavy and legalistic. Most people trying to get an overview of People CMM® find the material sleep-inducing. Here is what one HR Head said “I kept the model next to my bedside a year ago. I try to read it every night, but I am usually fast asleep in less than a page.” While the model book is more like reference material (and hence it is precise, complete, and unambiguous – and rightly so), there isn’t any alternate light reading material available for busy executives (with a short span of attention ) to excite them.

Then there are other frivolous reasons stated, like “we desperately want to implement it, but can’t find the model/ book” (huh? – have they tried Googling? Or searching on any online bookstore like Amazon or Flipkart?). Anyways, the model as a pdf document is freely downloadable from the SEI site here.

There has been an animated discussion on the topic in the LinkedIn group called “People CMM” (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1927506), for those who want to read other views.

So, where do we go from here?

The good news is that it is a great model. And the industry still needs a framework to address people management holistically. People CMM® is still the only comprehensive model available today, and there is no other competing framework.

SEI can lobby with the Government and DoD to adopt the model either for themselves or make it highly desirable (if not mandatory) for their vendors. The initial push helps. This is how many models/ frameworks became widely used, and SEI is best placed to lobby, as it is a DoD establishment.

We need to spread awareness using multiple forums, like conferences, journal, websites, and blogs where CEOs, HR folks and consultants hang out. We also need to do it across a wide range of industries to remove the “IT/SW” tag that the model carries. Talking about People CMM® in SEPG conferences, SPIN forums and LA meets is good, but is not going to take us far. Spreading awareness can be done by anyone who believes that the model is useful – SEI, partners, consultants, LAs and organizations who have benefitted from implementing the model.

We also need to tone down the message “it is not a HR model”. This message often makes the HR folks shy away from heartily taking up the model for implementation. No other organizational group has more at stake than HR, at least at maturity level 2. And without HR providing its wholehearted support, implementation of maturity level 2 process areas is almost impossible.

Finally, SEI can reduce the royalty and annual license fees for People CMM® related services, till the volumes start picking up. This will make the training and appraisal services cheaper to the end users, and make it a little bit easier to gain an entry.

Other related posts uploaded on the same blog:

• Adoption of People CMM® -01: Appraisal Results
• Adoption of People CMM® -02: Benefits Experienced
• Interview with Prakash Hegde: Experiences with People CMM® Implementation
• Interview: Monty Bharali (Head-HR, DSTWS) shares his experience with the People CMM® in a BPO-IT context

Please do share your experiences, comments and feedback by posting a reply/ comment.

^®-CMMI and CMM are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.
^SM-SCAMPI is a service mark of Carnegie Mellon University.

Hi,

If you like the posts on this blog and would like to be informed whenever a new entry is made, here is what you can do:

• Scroll back to the top of the page
• On the right hand side there is section called “FollowBlog via Email”
• In the space provided, type in your email id and click on the “Follow Blog” button (give your personal id, since companies often block wordpress)
• You will get an email at that email id
• In the email there is a clickthrough link – click on it and complete the formalities

Adoption of People CMM® -02: Benefits Experienced

Many organizations have adopted the People CMM® model – while some have undergone formal appraisals and assessments, others have adopted the practices but not participated in any formal appraisal of their implementation.

Many of these organizations have reported benefits (attributable to the implementation of the People CMM®). Such reports are available in the Software Engineering Information Repository (SEIR). (You need to register yourself to get access to the repository – the registration is free).

Typically, benefits touted and linked with People CMM® hover around Employee Engagement Scores, Employee Voluntary Turnover/ Attrition, Cost of Hiring, Cycle-Time to Hire, Employee Productivity and Employee Utilization. (It is also interesting to note that in the same organization, credit for the same benefits are claimed by other competing initiatives like CMMI® implementation, ISO 9001, Six Sigma, and sometimes by specific improvement projects ).

In addition to the above benefits, entities that implement the People CMM® consistently across two to three years tend to display certain long-term changes in their behavior. It is these observed changes that are listed in the next few paragraphs. This set of benefits / changes have been observed across several organizations that have implemented People CMM®, and been appraised / assessed using a Class-A method at least once for maturity level 3 or higher.

The sequence of the benefits listed is not necessary in any order (of priority or significance or sequence of occurrence).  They are also not mutually exclusive – each benefit could be feeding on the other. Here goes:

The organization increasingly takes a systems approach to its people related processes and initiatives. It understands that a small change in one process can have a large impact on (apparently) unrelated areas, because all things are inter-dependent. So, proposed changes in the organization’s policies and processes, and new initiatives are evaluated on a more holistic basis.

For example, hiring a new batch of fresh graduates at higher salaries is looked at not just from the point of view of salary cost, but also the impact on the morale of the existing staff, their engagement levels, and the impact of diversion of funds from other activities like training, certifications, and so on.

Implementation of the model promotes a long-term thinking in terms of people –numbers, skills, locations, and roles.  Business plans are used to create workforce plans and people related strategies that span several years. Actions like opening new locations, building new skills and collaboration with external experts are identified well in advance to equip the organization to get ready for the future, in a cost-effective manner.

The model increases transparency, democracy and openness in the organization (People CMM® is not meant for secretive organizations ). Organizations set-up multiple channels communications for top-down, lateral and bottom-up movement of information. People are encouraged to participate more and more in decision making and empowered to challenge decisions taken by higher-ups. HR policies are no longer seen as cast-in-stone .

Implementing the People CMM® builds organizational agility and ability to execute cross-functional projects. Very few initiatives require the active participation and collaboration of all functions/ departments. People CMM® implementation requires extensive collaboration between “support” functions like HR, Facilities, and Learning & Development with the “mainline” delivery functions. The model builds the organizational muscle to handle cross organizational initiatives.

Most organizations end up with considerable level of automation of their people related practices. Aspects like performance management (goal setting, regular feedback, end-cycle feedback), compensation (normalization, rule-based increases and bonuses), promotions, training (planning and tracking), staffing (resource management, recruitment, selection, offer, joining, induction) are automated. In addition, these sub-systems get integrated and interlinked.

Management of people related aspects becomes more data driven, and supported by data analytics.

For example, employee attrition is not looked at just as a month-on-month figure, but is subject to further analysis of patterns (are people of a career level more prone to attrition? Do people typically resign after spending a certain number of years in the company? Is attrition more common with people who possess a certain skill? Do people working outside their home state have a higher tendency to resign? Is there a linkage between the annual increment cycle and the peaks seen in attrition?).  The understanding achieved through the analytics is then used to change policies, or pay additional attention to a certain group of people.

The organization’s people management becomes driven more by competencies, rather than by tenure, or career level. The shift is gradual – at first, the importance shifts from seniority to demonstrated performance, and then there is a gradually increasing emphasis on competencies (knowledge, skills and process abilities). This shift to competencies start rippling through various processes like project allocation, hiring, promotions, increments, and bonuses.

Implementing the People CMM® practices enables the organization to handle scale/ growth very quickly. This is a knock-on effect of systems thinking and increased automation. The organization is able to hire faster, provide the required knowledge and skills quickly and gear up for large projects rapidly.

Another change that is seen is that the HR function becomes more of a business partner. Line functions start demanding business value from HR processes, and when such value is delivered, increase the involvement of HR in overall business strategies and decision-making.

Line managers become better people managers, reducing the load on HR, and other support functions. Line managers start providing inputs to enhance performance, help people enhance their skills, and identify and organize the required training for their people. Managers address people related issues and take responsibility to enable their teams to achieve performance (rather than redirect their team members to HR, facilities, and other support functions). In other words, line managers become HR managers for their teams.

Given below, in bullet points (we are so used to bullet points ), are the benefits seen by organizations implementing People CMM®.

The adoption of the model:

• drives a “systems” approach to its people related processes and initiatives
• promotes a long-term thinking in terms of the people
• increases transparency, democracy and openness
• builds organizational agility and ability to execute cross-functional projects
• increases the level of automation
• makes the organization metrics and data analytics
• drives a competency culture
• enables handling of rapid growth and scale
• makes the HR function become more of a business partner
• transforms line managers to better people managers

The above is a set of benefits observed in some of the organization that have implemented People CMM®. You may have observed other benefits or long-lasting changes.

Other related posts uploaded on the same blog:

• Adoption of People CMM® -01: Appraisal Results
• Adoption of People CMM® -03: Why is it Low?
• Interview with Prakash Hegde: Experiences with People CMM® Implementation
• Interview: Monty Bharali (Head-HR, DSTWS) shares his experience with the People CMM® in a BPO-IT context

Please do share your experiences, comments and feedback by posting a reply/ comment.

® CMM is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.

Hi,

If you like the posts on this blog and would like to be informed whenever a new entry is made, here is what you can do:

• Scroll back to the top of the page
• On the right hand side there is section called “FollowBlog via Email”
• In the space provided, type in your email id and click on the “Follow Blog” button (give your personal id, since companies often block wordpress)
• You will get an email at that email id
• In the email there is a clickthrough link – click on it and complete the formalities

Adoption of People CMM® -01: Appraisal Results

The People CMM® has been available for more than 15 years. Version 1.0 of the model was released in 1995 and version 2.0 was released in 2001. So, maybe it is time to look at the extent of adoption by the industry and benefits accrued to organizations that have adopted the model.

There are many ways one can evaluate the extent of adoption; one way is to look at the volume of Class-A appraisals done (Class-A appraisals are the only recognized way of getting a maturity level in People CMM®). Earlier, the Class-A appraisals were done using People CMM® Assessment method. This method was replaced with the SCAMPI^SM-A appraisal method, since 2006-07.

Without further verbiage, here is the data, in the form of a trend chart:

Here is the data in a tabular format, with more details:

Some context on the data above:

1. Data for the years 2002-2007 is picked up from a presentation titled People Capability Maturity Model: Product Suite Maturity Profile (January 2008) by the People CMM® Team at the SEI.
2. For the years 2008-2009, there is no officially compiled data easily available – the numbers are extrapolated based on the appraisals done by the most active Lead Appraisers in those years.
3. The 2010-2011 data is picked up from the Published Appraisal Results website maintained by SEI. Some appraisals may be missing from the data, if the appraised entity did not wish to publish the data (some organizations do not like the data to be published, some decline permission because they are embarrassed by the maturity level rating that they have got ).

Going back to the graph, there seems to be an alternating trend, every 2-3 years. There is a peak of 10+ appraisals, followed by a dip to around 4-5 appraisals in the next year. Maybe, People CMM® is a seasonal flavour! . [Actually the data points are too few to reach any conclusion about trends].

The numbers are not flattering – given that the model has been in the market for so many years, just 4-14 appraisals per year (across the whole wide world) is very low. Not more than 2 Lead Appraisers are required to handle this volume!

Further analysis of the past 15 appraisals (in the last 2 years 3 months) listed in the Published Appraisal Results website (with Filter People CMM® v2.0) maintained by SEI shows the following:

• Geographic spread: India-8; China-3; Philippines-1; Oman-1; UK-1; Malaysia-1. It is interesting to note that there are no appraisals in the US.
• Industry spread: IT-8; BPO-3; Banking-1; Utilities-1; Engineering-1. So, not a model “just for software organizations”.
• Most of the appraisals are led either by Sankararaman Dhandapani or by Rajesh Naik of QAI India Ltd. The last fifteen appraisals are accounted for between four LAs (out of the 13 LAs listed for People CMM® in the SEI Partner Directory).

Hope the trend of low number of appraisals is broken in the coming years.

Other related posts uploaded on the same blog:

• Adoption of People CMM® -02: Benefits Experienced
• Adoption of People CMM® -03: Why is it Low?
• Interview with Prakash Hegde: Experiences with People CMM® Implementation
• Interview: Monty Bharali (Head-HR, DSTWS) shares his experience with the People CMM® in a BPO-IT context

^® CMMI and CMM are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.
^SM-SCAMPI is a service mark of Carnegie Mellon University.

Hi,

If you like the posts on this blog and would like to be informed whenever a new entry is made, here is what you can do:

• Scroll back to the top of the page
• On the right hand side there is section called “FollowBlog via Email”
• In the space provided, type in your email id and click on the “Follow Blog” button (give your personal id, since companies often block wordpress)
• You will get an email at that email id
• In the email there is a clickthrough link – click on it and complete the formalities