Brought to you by the letter J

"CMMI is full of big scary words."

A rather simple yet poignant comment by my dear wife, Jeanne, who was responding to a discussion we were having about my Hedgehog Concept.

It so happened that I had just returned from a meeting with a client at which I diffused a contentious exchange over the matter of Configuration Audits. 

For an example of why there's confusion, and why there's contention, visit the above link.  The answer provided to the question comes straight from the CMMI model text.  By contrast here's my explanation of what CM SP 3.2 expects:

In plain-talk, CM SG 1 would have us figuring out what we want to control the configurations of and a way to finger a given configuration of one of those controlled things at various points in time (or space).  SG 2 has us making sure that the things we want controlled only change when we want them to change and that we know what those changes are.

With all this emphasis and energy directed at things changing under a watchful eye, what SG 3 is saying with SP 3.2 is simply this: you don't want anything slipping through, so make sure SG 1 and SG 2 are working, OK?

Wasn't that so much easier?

Most companies worthy of their products are probably doing something to that effect anyway; CMMI is pointing out that it's probably a good idea to now be doing it regularly and on purpose.  After all, in development, a really bad day is when the customer calls and complains that the supposed "update" you sent to the product actually took out some nifty features they kinda liked when you sent them the previous update.

This episode of the AgileCMMI blog has been brought to you by the letter J and the number 3.2.