By Karen T.
Last October, ActioNet achieved CMMI DEV and SVC V2.0 Maturity Level (ML) 4 with SAM, the next milestone in our CMMI quality journey. Building on ISO, the journey started in 2003 with our first assessment and continues today, 20 years later. This achievement shows ActioNet’s commitment to continual improvement to meet business goals.
Version 2 of the CMMI model rearchitected the model, strengthened the alignment of measurements and improvements with business goals in all maturity levels, improved the adoption and transition tools and enhanced the appraisal process. We benchmark performance and set objectives for key metric indicators that indicate performance to their specific business objective. For Agile development projects focused on time-to-market, we increased velocity by 34% and reduced effort per user story by 14% while maintaining quality. For a Service Desk customer with an objective to balance customer service cost and satisfaction, we reduced ticket resolution time by 57% and maintained a 97.5% satisfaction rate.
ActioNet iteratively applied the process improvement and qualitative management concepts of CMMI ML4 to achieve these results. To perform objective performance analysis, we needed to overcome challenges of collecting sufficient and accurate data with minimal impact to team performance. Key to overcoming these challenges was identification of the correct data and metrics that indicate real performance and using tools that automate the data collection and analysis. Analysis techniques need to be aligned with the complexity of the issue being analyzed and maturity of the processes. ActioNet’s Process Management approach includes statistical tools/ techniques (bar charts, run charts, control charts, Pareto charts, histograms etc.) to verify data quality, identify anomalies, assess process stability and root cause is performed for outliers, recurring problems or deviations. Control Charts and Regression analysis are used to understand process performance, measure improvements and establish objectives.
CMMI V2.0 ML4 is our most recent step as we raise the bar to help customers meet business objectives.