TIME TO MARKET HINDERED BY POOR CMMI IMPLEMENTATIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 09, 2006
CONTACT:Entinex

03/09/06, NASHVILLE, TN.   Processes focused on process and not on productivity cause many companies to lose faith in CMMI, says Hillel Glazer, Principal & CEO of Entinex, Inc., here at the Software Engineering Institute's annual process improvement conference called "SEPG".

Many software companies are winning Federal business for their ability to deliver highly complex products in short time-frames.  However, the Federal market-space expects companies to be implementing CMMI and this has companies concerned.  CMMI has gained a reputation for putting their value-proposition at risk by slowing time-to-market with their new wares. 

In Time to Market vs. CMMI, Glazer notes the traditional approaches to CMMI implementations as being very burdensome (both in time and cost) to smaller and more agile companies, and how these will not work in an economy that expects immediate gratification of delivered products.  Glazer explained, "too many organizations get burned when they try to implement CMMI quickly to get through an appraisal.  But, while it may look like it's faster and cheaper to take this route, it turns out to be very costly, risky, and disruptive to maintaining the value-proposition."

In the presentation, Glazer describes the need to "underlay" the process solution within the development approach.  He says, the 3 steps to "underlaying" the process solution are: (1) Map the developers' reality to the CMMI model, don't impose the model onto their reality; (2) Create interview scripts in the language used by the developers, not in the language of the CMMI model, and (3) Ensure leadership understands what terms such as "sponsorship" and "commitment" actually mean -- which often translates to a change of attitude at the top.

Glazer also sat on a well-attended panel on the topic of Agile and CMMI where a moderator posed quesitons on the challenges and steps in bringing together CMMI and Agile concepts.  The panel also fielded questions from the audience.  A notable moment included a question form a member of the audience whose company leadership decreed that projects are to use agile methods to improve their process performance but never outlined processes or metrics to make this happen.  The questioner said that "agile" projects didn't perform as well as their "traditional" projects and wanted the panel to explain how this could be so considering that the panel was advocating agile methods as a viable disciplined process.  Glazer responded that this was a classic example of company leadership not demonstrating commitment to process improvement and not understanding process improvement basics.  From the audience response, which included several senior officials of the SEI, it seemed to be an appreciated response.

About Entinex, Inc.
Branded as the technology strategy company, Entinex, Inc. is the software process improvement expert for small-to-medium organizations.  Helping them get from estimates to actuals predictably, profitably, consistently.  And in doing that, Entinex clients are improving the consistency and predictability of delivering on their customers' expectations, on time and on budget.  Established in 2001, Entinex’s capabilities draw on over 17 years of experience in engineering, consulting, developing, deploying, and implementing technology.  Entinex is centrally located between Baltimore and Washington with easy access throughout the region and has experience and served clients throughout the B/W region, out-of-state, and internationally.

CMMI is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.  SEPG is a service mark of Carnegie Mellon University.

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