4 Theory
4.2 An Understanding of CMMI Model
4.2.3 Practice Areas, Groups and Goals of CMMI Model
A basic understanding of CMMI model structure can help in better implementation of CMMI. The building blocks of CMMI model are Categories, Practice Areas (PAs), Practice Groups (PGs) and Practices. Practice Areas (PAs) are a collection of similar practices that together achieve the defined intent, value and required information described for spe-cific practice area. Practice Group (PG) is used to organize structure for practices within a practice area to help in understanding and adopting specific practices. It also provides a path for performance improvement. Practices focus on what is needed to improve perfor-mance and productivity of the organization.
A better CMMI model is built around four categories: Doing, Managing, Enabling and Im-proving. These categories help in categorization of various Practice Areas, Practice Groups and Practices. The following picture explains the main objective of categories of CMMI model.
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Figure 9. CMMI Model Categories (CMMI Institute, 2018b)
The categories of CMMI model is mapped to various PAs of an organization as follows.
Figure 10. CMMI practice areas and practices for categories (CMMI Institute, 2018b)
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The four categories of CMMI model level 3 mapped to PAs proposes some practices to be followed by organization intending to implement CMMI level 3. A person can get clear picture of the need of categorization of capability areas and practice areas by understand-ing their intents and values. The purpose of intent of any practice areas to achieve the objective. The value presents an outcome of implementing practice areas in the organiza-tion.
The first category of CMMI model level 3 is Doing. This category with relevant PAs and practices are mentioned as below.
Figure 11. Capability & Practice Areas Under Doing Category (source: KPMG, 2018)
PA Intent Value
Requirements Development and Manage-ment (RDM)
Elicit requirements, ensure com-mon understanding by stakehold-ers, align requirements, plan and work products
Ensures that customers’ require-ments and expectations are pro-cesses and resulting work products
Increase the consistent use and improvement of the processes to maximize business benefit and customer satisfaction
Verification and Validation (VV)
Verify that selected solutions and components meet their require-ments
Validate that selected solutions and components fulfil their intended use in the target environment
Verification and validation of se-lected solutions and components throughout the project increases the likelihood that the solution will satisfy the customer
Peer Review Identify and address work product Reduce cost and rework by
un-43 (PR) issues through reviews by the
pro-ducer’s peers or Subject Matter Experts
covering issues or defects early
Technical So-lution (TS)
Design and build solutions that meet customer requirements
Provides a cost-effective design and solution that meets customer requirements and reduces rework Product
Inte-gration (PI)
Integrate and deliver the solution that addresses the functionality and quality requirements
Increase customer satisfaction by giving them a solution that meets or exceeds their functionality and quality requirements course of the agreement, and eval-uate the supplier’s deliverables
Provides an explicit understanding between the acquirer and supplier to maximize the success of agreed-on efforts to deliver a sup-plier deliverable
Table 14. Intent and Value of PAs for “Doing” Category (source: KPMG, 2018)
Then the intent and value of various capability and practice areas of second category, Managing, of CMMI model can be presented as follows.
Figure 12. Capability & Practice Areas for “Managing” category (source: KPMG, 2018)
PA Intent Value
Estimating (EST)
Estimate the scope, effort, duration and cost of the work and resources needed to develop, acquire and deliver the solution
Estimation provides a basis for making commitments, planning and reducing un-certainty, which allows for early corrective actions and increases the likelihood of
44 and constraints of the organizations includ-ing budget, schedule, resource demand and capacity, quality, functionality require-ments, risks and opportunities. Plans also describe the work to be performed, appli-cable organizational set of standard pro-cesses, assets and tailoring guidelines, dependencies, working people and stake-holders and their role
Optimizes cost, functionali-ty and qualifunctionali-ty to increase the likelihood that objec-tives will be met
Monitor and Control (MC)
Provide an understanding of the project progress so appropriate corrective actions can be taken when performance deviates significantly from plans
Increases the possibility of meeting objectives by tak-ing early actions to adjust for significant performance deviations capitalize on positive im-pacts to increase likelihood of meeting objectives Organizational
Training (OT)
develop the skills and knowledge of per-sonnel so that they perform their roles effi-ciently and effectively
Enhance individual’s skills and knowledge to improve organizational work per-formance
Table 15. Intent and Value of PAs for “Managing” Category (source: KPMG, 2018)
Now, the intent and value of implementing different practice areas of third category, Ena-bling, of the CMMI model can be presented by the following picture and table.
Figure 13. Capability & Practice Areas for “Enabling” category (source: KPMG, 2018)
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PA Intent Value
Causal Analysis and Resolution (CAR)
Identify causes of selected outcomes and take action to either prevent recurrence of undesirable outcomes or ensure recurrence of positive out-comes
Addressing root cause issues eliminates rework and directly improves quality and recorded process that analyses al-ternatives
Increases the objectivity of decision making and the prod-ucts using configuration identifica-tion, version control, change control and audits.
reduces loss of work and in-creases the ability to deliver the correct version of the solu-tion to the customer
Table 16. Intent and Value of PAs for “Enabling” Category (source: KPMG, 2018)
At last, the practice areas of fourth category, Improving, of the CMMI model can be pre-sented with their intents and values.
Figure 14. Capability & Practice Areas for “Improving” category (source: KPMG, 2018)
PA Intent Value
Governance (Gov)
Senior management identifies what is important for doing the work and defines the approach needed to accomplish the objec-tives of the organization
Minimizes the cost of process im-plementation, increases the likeli-hood of meeting objectives and ensures that the implemented pro-cesses support and contribute to
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the success of the business Implementation
Infrastructure (II)
Ensure the processes important to the organization are persistently and habitually used and improved
Sustains the ability to consistently achieve goals and objectives effi-ciently and effectively
Process Man-agement (PCM)
Manages and Implements the con-tinuous improvement of processes and infrastructure to a) support accomplishing business objec-tives; b) identify and implement the most beneficial process improve-ments and c) make the results of process improvement visible, ac-cessible and sustainable
Ensures that processes, infrastruc-ture and their improvement con-tribute to successfully meeting business objectives
Process Asset Development (PAD)
Develop and keep undated the process assets necessary to per-form the work
Provides a capability to understand and repeat successful perfor-mance
Managing Per-formance and management (MPM)
Manage Performance using measurement and analysis to achieve business objectives
Maximizes business return on in-vestment by focusing management and improvement efforts on cost, schedule and quality performance
Table 17. Intent and Value of PAs for “Improving” Category (source: KPMG, 2018)