CMMI for Services: Guidelines for Superior Service

CMMI® for Services (CMMI-SVC) is a comprehensive set of guidelines to help organizations establish and improve processes for delivering services. By adapting and extending proven standards and best practices to reflect the unique challenges faced in service industries, CMMI-SVC offers providers a practical and focused framework for achieving higher levels of service quality, controlling costs, improving schedules, and ensuring user satisfaction. A member of the newest CMMI model, CMMI-SVC Version 1.3, reflects changes to the model made for all constellations, including clarifications of high-maturity practices, alignment of the sixteen core process areas, and improvements in the SCAMPI appraisal method.

The indispensable CMMI® for Services, Second Edition, is both an introduction to the CMMI-SVC model and an authoritative reference for it. The contents include the complete model itself, formatted for quick reference. In addition, the book’s authors have refined the model’s introductory chapters; provided marginal notes to clarify the nature of particular process areas and to show why their practices are valuable; and inserted longer sidebars to explain important concepts. Brief essays by people with experience in different application areas further illustrate how the model works in practice and what benefits it offers.

The book is divided into three parts.

Part One begins by thoroughly explaining CMMI-SVC, its concepts, and its use. The authors provide robust information about service concepts, including a discussion of lifecycles in service environments; outline how to start using CMMI-SVC; explore how to achieve process improvements that last; and offer insights into the relationships among process areas.

Part Two describes generic goals and practices, and then details the complete set of twenty-four CMMI-SVC process areas, including specific goals, specific practices, and examples. The process areas are organized alphabetically by acronym and are tabbed for easy reference.

Part Three contains several useful resources, including CMMI-SVC-related references, acronym definitions, a glossary of terms, and an index.

Whether you are new to CMMI models or are already familiar with one or more of them, this book is an essential resource for service providers interested in learning about or implementing process improvement.

Eileen Forrester is the manager of the CMMI for Services program at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and a senior member of the technical staff. She was the co-chair of the International Process Research Consortium and the editor of the IPRC Process Research Framework. Eileen is the developer of TransPlant, a transition-planning process, and her current research area is in process-oriented approaches to service delivery, technology change, risk management, and emergent system types. These approaches include GAIT, CMMI for Services, OCTAVE, MDA, and multimodel improvement approaches. She has more than thirty-five years of experience in technology transition, strategic planning, process improvement, communication planning, and in managing product, service, and nonprofit organizations.

Brandon L. Buteau is a Technical Fellow, technologist, and process architect at Northrop Grumman. He has been a member of the CMMI for Services model development team from its beginning, and is both the chief architect for the model and the team’s ontologist. His professional career of more than thirty-five years has spanned the analysis and development of advanced systems, technology, and processes. Brandon currently helps to define and develop quality and process architectures as well as supporting tools. He leads, performs, coordinates, and consults on research, strategic analyses, technology assessments, knowledge/information modeling, and business development across a spectrum of technologies needed by customers. He received a B.A. in applied mathematics (computer science) from Harvard University in 1976.

Sandy Shrum is a senior writer/editor and communications point of contact for the Software Engineering Process Management program at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Along with this book, she has coauthored two other CMMI books: CMMI®-ACQ: Guidelines for Improving the Acquisition of Products and Services (Addison-Wesley, 2009) and two editions of CMMI®: Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement (Addison-Wesley). She has been with the SEI since 1995 and has been a member of the CMMI Development Team since the CMMI project’s inception in 1998. Her roles on the project have included model author, small review team member, reviewer, editor, model development process coordinator, and quality assurance process owner. Before joining the SEI, Sandy worked for eight years as a document developer with Legent Corporation, a Virginia-based software company. Her experience as a technical communicator dates back to 1988, when she earned her M.S. in professional writing from Carnegie Mellon University. Her undergraduate degree, a B.S. in business administration, was earned at Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania.