CMMI assessments - Marilyn Bush

Assessments are internal reviews aimed at making an organization better from the inside, and they are critical tools for process improvement. The CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) is a U.S. government-sponsored model to help organizations improve their processes, and perhaps more importantly, demonstrate their level of process quality to vendors. Many organizations adopt the CMMI because it is required in many government contracts. In order to improve process, these organizations must first know their level of CMMI maturity, but these organizations struggle in this assessment. This book spells out the specific steps an organization must take to gather an accurate CMMI assessment. The resulting assessment will help the organization improve their processes and advance their level of CMMI maturity. The authors, noted CMMI experts, use anecdotal histories of incidents they have encountered on actual assessments to illustrate key teaching points.

Marilyn Bush is a leading figure in international software process improvement. After twenty years of experience as a project, systems, and software manager, she was enlisted by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (SEI) to provide practical and managerial perspective on the team that produced the CMM. In 1995, she became one of the co-authors of The Capability Maturity Model: Guidelines for Improving the Software Process. She is also an author of the SEI's Introductory Course on the CMM, and had a hand in developing the SEI CBA IPI Assessment Method and the SEI Lead Assessor Course. The head of her own consulting firm since 1992 (www.marilynbush.com), Marilyn is one of the world's most experienced CMM and CMMI Lead Assessors and has specialized in advising companies at the senior executive level.

Donna K. Dunaway, Ph.D., is a pioneer in the computing industry, having taught herself to program an IBM 704 in the late '50s. After working in a number of software development organizations during her career, she joined the Process Group at the SEI in 1992. She developed and managed the SEI Appraiser Program from its beginnings in 1994 until 2000. She served on the CMMI Product Development Team from 1998 to 2000. As head of her own consulting company, The Dunaway Group (www.dunawaygroup.com), Donna works with organizations in their process-improvement initiatives to achieve greater benefits from use of the models and assessment methods.

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