CMMI V2.0 - Some Key Concepts and Terms

An earlier post titled CMMI V2.0 - Some Major Changes and Improvements Over CMMI V1.3 talked about the major changes introduced into the CMMI version 2.0.

Overall the changes are quite useful and improve upon the structure of the framework as well as provide better clarity on certain key principles and concepts.

There are several key concepts and terms in V2.0 as compared to V1.3 that are important from an implementer's point of view.

Here are some of them:

Sustain the focus on continual performance improvement through continual process improvement

• Process improvement is to be employed as a tool to eventually bring in improvements in the performance of the business operations.
• Return on investment of process improvement initiatives should be always on the top of the mind and hence should be measured and closely monitored so as to attain the desired business outcome.

Leverage opportunities in addition to managing risk in the risk management area (this is seemingly a direct lift-off from ISO 9001:2015)

• Risks are those events and factors that act as head-winds and can derail or decelerate the project from meeting its objectives. 
• On the other hand, opportunities are those events and factors that act as tail-winds and can accelerate and keep the project on track so that it can exceed its objectives.

Perform causal analysis right from the start and not only at level 5 as was the case in version 1.3

• Causal analysis need not wait for systems and processes to become highly mature.
• It can and should be done even in an organization which has just started its process improvement journey.

Conduct causal analysis on successes and good happenstances too and not only the failures and problems

• Causal analysis is generally viewed  to be linked with problems and their mitigation.
• However, causal analysis can be equally applied to derive learning from successes and good practices.

Derive effort estimates from explicit size estimates

• At the outset, size needs to be explicitly estimated. In this context, size is viewed as a measure of the quantity of the work to be performed and is regarded as a fundamental attribute of that work.
• Subsequent to that, effort is derived from size estimates and additional considerations like work complexity, team competency, etc.

The above provides just some of the several key concepts and terms in V2.0 as compared to V1.3 that are important from an implementer's point of view.

For any implementer with working knowledge of CMMI V1.3, it would be quite useful to correctly understand and incorporate these and other such key concepts and terms.