Using the Services Capability Maturity Model - A Road Map for Improvement

Two 1-day Workshops Covering Different Aspects of the CMMI Services Model

You will learn how to:

Improve your organization's service consistency and delivery using a well-defined and systematic improvement model.
Reduce mistakes and poor morale due to chronic chaos.
Understand where your CMMI Service (CMMI-SVC) gaps are now.

Audience:

Large and small teams that provide services internally or externally, such as finance, sales, help desk support, IT, health care or systems engineering services.
Individual contributors, team leads and senior managers wanting to improve their group's efficiency and quality.
Individuals leading CMMI-SVC improvement programs who want a refresher and answers to their implementation questions.

Read more about the services model

Workshop	Date	Location	Cost
CMMI-SVC Maturity Level 2	Tue., April 20, 2010	Hanover Park Center, Addison, TX	$650
CMMI-SVC Supplement	Wed., April 21, 2010	Hanover Park Center, Addison, TX	$650
Combined workshops	Both days	Hanover Park Center, Addison, TX	$1150

Location and Times

Location: Hanover Park Center, 16633 Dallas Parkway, Suite 600, Addison, TX 75001, (972.588.1800)
Map: Click here

Time: All workshops are 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. All prices include student materials and lunch.

Overview

The SEI Capability Maturity Model Integration for Services (CMMI-SVC) is an improvement framework designed specifically for service delivery organizations.

Many organizations try to improve the quality and productivity of their service operations by establishing a company-wide improvement program. These programs often result in large amounts of process documentation, which eventually become a burden or are ignored completely. In many cases, the organization is left with very little benefit to show for its efforts. The CMMI-SVC model guides service groups in their improvement efforts.

Each workshop focuses on using CMMI-SVC practices to achieve business goals and solve real problems. Participants start each workshop by identifying their group goals and problems. As they learn about the Process Areas (PA), they select elements that best help them move toward their goals and fix their problems. At the end of the workshop, they group all of the actions into a draft action plan.

Throughout both workshops we discuss the difficulties that people encounter while doing improvement. These include over-documenting processes, implementing too much change at once, resistance to change, rote use of the CMMI, and maintaining management buy-in.

Workshop Details

Day 1: CMMI-SVC - Level 2 Workshop

Learning Objectives

The course will help participants:

Apply the CMMI principles to meet the needs (goals and problems) of service and IT organizations.
Develop a mapping of CMMI Maturity Level 2 practices to their organization's business needs.
Understand the importance of having concise processes within a service organization and the rationale for process improvement.
Understand the architecture of the CMMI model (maturity levels, process areas, capability levels, goals, and generic practices).

Agenda

Introduction
CMMI overview (Services, Development and Acquisition models).
Characteristics of each Maturity Level.
Goal-problem-based improvement: How to tie CMMI practices directly to the business goals of the organization.
Process maturity - CMMI principles.
Level 2 process areas of the CMMI-SVC Model Staged Representation.
Interpreting CMMI.
Scaling CMMI for small organizations.
Using the CMMI to run service groups successfully.
Common process improvement mistakes.
Exercise: Developing an improvement plan tied to the business goals/needs of the organization.

Day 2: CMMI-SVC - Supplement Workshop

This course covers the additional six service-specific Process Areas not covered in the Level 2 workshop, and assumes some knowledge of CMMI. Students looking to learn about the CMMI-SVC model who have no prior CMMI background need to also take the workshop "CMMI Services - Level 2," listed above.

Learning Objectives

The course will help participants:

Apply the CMMI principles to meet the needs of service and IT organizations.
Learn the seven service-specific Process Areas in the model for Maturity Levels 2 and 3.
Develop a mapping of CMMI practices to their organization's business needs.
Understand the importance of having defined processes within a service organization and the rationale for process improvement.
Understand the architecture of the CMMI (maturity levels, process areas, capability levels, goals, and generic practices).
Gain a sufficient understanding of Process Area components to be able to informally self-assess your organization and function as a CMMI-based appraisal team member.

Agenda

Introduction.
CMMI overview.
Core Process Areas.
Continuous vs. Staged Representations.
Differences between CMMI-DEV and CMMI-SVC.
The seven Level 2 and 3 service-specific Process Areas.
Interpreting CMMI.
Using the CMMI to run service groups successfully.
Exercise: Developing an improvement plan tied to the business goals/needs of the organization.

About the Instructor

Neil Potter is co-founder of The Process Group, a company formed in 1990 that consults on process improvement, CMMI, engineering and project management.

He has 24 years of experience in process improvement, engineering and project management. Neil is an SEI authorized lead appraiser for SCAMPI appraisals (development and services), a certified high-maturity appraiser, Intro to CMMI instructor, Six Sigma Greenbelt and Certified Scrum Master. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Essex (UK) and is the co-author of Making Process Improvement Work - A Concise Action Guide for Software Managers and Practitioners, Addison-Wesley.

The Process Group consults to service, software, IT, systems and hardware organizations.

Questions