Sunday, November 30, 2008

Where is your organization on the CMM?

Currently, my company is trying to develop from step 1: the Initial level, to step 2: the Managed level. When I first started, I realized how much the company relies on competent people. Historically, the initial stage was comfortable and and probably a good stage to be in. But as the company expanded in recent years, it seems to have outgrown the comfort level of its first stage. At present, we need better project planning, tracking, management, development of formal systems, performance reviews, and quality assurance. My primary goal in my job is to help the company build and improve its processes and systems so that it can function successfully and efficiently. Until I learned about the Capability Maturity Level, I found my self constantly frustrated at work because I felt that there are so many processes to develop that at times I feel overwhelmed. But now I realize that I get frustrated because I want to run up the steps quickly--sometimes I get so excited about developing systems and processes that I expect the organization to grow from the first Initial stage to the last Optimizing stage way too fast. So the model helped me asses at what stage the company is today and to what level it can be developed realisticly with its current resources.
I hope to see the company enter stage 2: the Managed level of Organizational Maturity more rigorously in the upcoming year. I can see that it is currently making progress and believe that it will develop project monitoring and control especially in IT related projects. Also I believe that it will develop more accurate, efficient, and consistent measurement and analysis of its people, it fleet, and it carbon footprint. My ultimate goal is to help the company mature into stage 3: Defined level or even stage 4: Quantitatively managed. Although it would be quite a treat to see the company mature to stage 5: Optimizing level.
So I'm just trying to learn as much as I can and acquire as many tools as I can to bring the most value to the company I currently work for and I hope that our current economy does not threaten my goals and bring down my efforts.

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