This paper describes how to apply the CMMI in a business-focused way, by doing frequent small assessments. Goals are input to the assessments, and a matrix is used to assure both organisation and process area coverage. The results of assessments integrate smoothly with operational targets of existing groups within the organisation.

1. Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, by Ben Linders
Ericsson EuroLab Netherlands (ELN) is a company within Ericsson, the world's leading supplier
in telecommunications. They have facilities in the south (Rijen) and in the east (Enschede, and
Emmen). In total about 1100 employees are working for this company, almost all are directly
involved in software and hardware development. The scope of this article is about the design unit
in Rijen, and in particular about the Charging Competence Centre department. This department
employs about 160 persons, developing charging systems for telephone exchanges. The
technology is UNIX and NT based systems, using UML based Object Oriented development with
C++ and JAVA, deploying mostly Rational tools
This paper describes how to apply the CMMI in a business-focused way, by doing frequent small
assessments. Goals are input to the assessments, and a matrix is used to assure both organisation
and process area coverage. The results of assessments integrate smoothly with operational targets
of existing groups within the organisation.
Practical tools support the frequent assessments, and experience with the CMMI is used to
optimize the assessment and improvement cycle, resulting in continuously improving the
performance of the organisation based on its goals.
1 History: CMM as a rating model
CMM assessments have been done for quite some years within Ericsson. This paragraph
describes the history, a more detailed description can be found in a separate paper on this subject
[ref 1].
Ericsson was one of the early adopters of the CMM model. The process focus, and the concept of
measurement based improvement were the unique selling points why the model was chosen. The
first assessment, back in 1994, showed Ericsson Rijen was on level 1, which was no surprise. An
improvement program was initiated, which established a process support organisation that rolled
out all level 2 processes in the projects. The next assessment in 1995 showed that the Research
and Development Unit of Ericsson Rijen was on level 3, the first company within Ericsson
worldwide.
Reaching level 3 was a big reward for the organisation. As a result, the focus changed, and
operational goals such as meeting deadlines, combined with many vacancies demanded their toll.
Projects became less focused on processes and measurements. Since the process support
organisation remained, as did the culture to improve in most of the departments, the projects still
managed to live up to the expectations. But things didn’t always go that smoothly…
One department in Ericsson Rijen, the Charging Competence Centre, kept on believing in the
CMM and its usefulness. It started their own program to come to level 4, by defining
measurements and applying them in their projects [ref 2]. In June 1998, they made their first
preparations towards a new assessment. Bill Curtis, associated with the Software Engineering
Institute, stated that the Unix development department could be "among the world elite in one
year". Finally, the department was re-assessed in November 1998, where it was found to be a
professional "solid as a rock" level 3 organization, with parts of level 4 institutionalised.
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 1 of 12

2. Having worked for quite some years on process improvements, and not getting the reward of
being fully at level 4, came somewhat as a disappointment to this department. And it also
confused them, as they didn’t just implement the practices of the CMM model. The approach had
been from the goals and concepts of the model, implemented it in such a way that it made sense
to do it. Though no process areas were excluded, not all practices were implemented. For some
there were alternative solutions. But most of all they were confused because in their opinion the
improvement programs had delivered results, being an organisation able to perform projects in a
controlled way, and capable of improving where business goals required it.
As a next step, the department didn’t start a new improvement program to fill the gaps found in
the assessment. Instead, the approach focussing on business goals and selecting improvements
that contribute to them was continued, regardless of CMM levels involved. This focus on CMM
matched perfectly with operational goals set by the department, in the sense that CMM would
contribute directly to the business.
Along with this focus, the assessment approach had to change also. Full assessments were no
longer useful, instead there was a need for small focused assessments which would come up with
detailed findings. These assessments should be an instrument to be used next to audits and
improvement sessions in projects.
2 Approach: Business Focused CMMI Assessments
A new assessment method has been defined: Business-focused CMMI assessments. Such an
assessment is a class C type assessment [ref 3], where the main purpose is to find strengths and
weaknesses. The assessment consists of the following steps:
• Assign Orderer and Customer
• Select Goals
• Define Organizational Scope
• Determine Process Areas
• Organise Assessment Team
• Plan Assessment
• Perform Assessment
• Support Improvements
The purpose of the first six steps is to make an assessment proposal. This document fully defines
the assessment, and after approval it is used to perform the assessment and support the
improvements. The steps will be discussed in detail in the following paragraphs.
2.1 Assign Orderer and Customer
The first step is to define the interface between the assessment and the organisation. This
interface consists of two persons: An orderer and a customer. They will play an essential role.
The orderer has to be a member of the highest management of the organisation. The orderer is
responsible for one or more goals that will selected for this assessment, for that reason (s)he is
particularly interested that a good assessment will be done. Also, this person arranges funding for
the assessment, including hours of the interviewees. It is also the person who has end
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 2 of 12

3. The customer is the person who needs the result from the assessment: The findings. This person
is responsible for implementing improvement actions. It can be the same person as the orderer. It
must be clear, before the assessment is started, that the customer is able to take over the results of
the assessment, and arrange the improvement actions. If there is no room in the organisation to
improve, then there is no need to assess either.
Both the orderer and customer must be clearly stated in the assessment proposal. They will also
attend kick-off and final meeting, where they personally show their stakes in this assessment and
what they require the assessment to deliver.
2.2 Select Goals
For every assessment, there must be a business reason to do it. This reason has to do with one or
more goals of the organisation, or with strategies performed to reach the goal(s). This step results
in a list of goals and strategies that have to be assessed.
For instance, an organisation can have the goal: “All projects must be finished on the planned end
date”. To reach this goal, there are strategies such as improvement programs for project planning,
and lead-time improvement. When it is uncertain if the strategies will assure that the goal will be
met within the defined time frame (usually one or more calendar years), then an assessment is
useful to investigate it.
Goal setting is a complex, but vital activity. This assessment approach requires that the goals are
clear, but sometimes it turns out that when discussing them, additional clarification is needed.
Also priorities between goals are not always sufficiently defined. It is of the utmost importance
that there are no more uncertainties about the goals before the assessment planning is started.
An assessment focuses on a subset of the goals, in order to come with findings specifically related
to reaching those goals. Assessing against all goals of an organisation results in too many
findings, where priorities will have to be set after an assessment. In such a case, findings will be
thrown away and valuable assessment time has been wasted. More important: An expectation was
given that the problems would be solved. Not living up to this expectation can seriously hamper
future assessments and improvement programs.
The experience is that assessments at the Charging Competence Centre have been focussing on 1
to 2 main goals. Further on in this paper it will become clear how it was assured that all the goals
were covered by assessments over time.
2.3 Define Organizational scope
The result of the previous step is a list of goals and strategies. In this step the part of the
organisation involved in reaching these goals or performing the strategies must be identified. The
result will be a list of groups and roles/functions, which have to be interviewed.
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 3 of 12

4. A goal is assigned to a responsible person or group in the organisation. Also, other persons and
groups are performing work that relates to the goal. The boundary of the assessment must be
defined such that it includes the right parts of the organisation, nothing more, and nothing less.
A misunderstanding is that in an assessment, every group of the organisation has to be
represented. This should not be the case. If groups are not involved in activities related to the
goals to be assessed, then there is no need to interview them. Any findings from this group would
be put aside and considered irrelevant, because they do not endanger the goal. So why waste their
time, and yours?
So the scope includes only groups giving input to the work, performing the work, and requiring
output from the work, where the work is that part of all work done in the department that is
required to reach the goal or perform the strategy.
2.4 Determine Process Areas
Now that the scope of the assessment is defined from the organisation’s perspective, let’s look at
the scope from the model’s perspective. That is, given the organisational scope there is usually
need to assess only a selected set of process areas from the CMMI model.
Looking at the same example that the organisational goal to investigate is lead-time precision,
and the groups involved would be two product development teams running projects, and a staff
group on configuration management. It was decided in the organisational scope step that the
assessment should only interview the project management staff, and not the engineers. In that
case, it would be useful to select process areas mainly from the project management cluster, and
additionally add configuration management from the support cluster. There is no need to assess
process areas from engineering or process management clusters, since no activities from these
process areas are performed within the organisational boundaries of the assessment. Again this
prevents coming up with findings which are not goal related.
Some experience from the Charging Competence Centre department: In the assessments done in
2000 and 2001, the number of process areas varied a lot. There were assessments with only 1
(Decision Analysis and Resolution) or 2 (Requirements Management/development) process areas,
but there have also been assessments with 7 areas. The latter is about the maximum, when it
becomes more then one should return to the first step and try to reduce the number of goals
involved. There has been no assessment covering all process areas on a specific level.
The result of this step is a list of process areas that will be assessed. With this step, the total scope
of the assessment is defined.
2.5 Organise Assessment Team
Until now, there has only been an Assessment Team Leader. This person has done all previous
steps, together with persons from the line organisation. Now the team can be assembled, so that
they can take the next steps together.
A team consists of a team leader, and 1 to 2 assessors. The minimum relates to the fact that it is
essential to have at least two views on the findings. At any time an assessor can discuss
preliminary findings, and do a peer review before presenting them to the interviewees. The
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 4 of 12

5. maximum relates to the number of process areas and communication; adding more people (unless
they are expert in a certain area) doesn’t improve the quality nor the time needed.
In an assessment team there has to be at least 1 member from the assessed organisation. The role
of this “local” member is to assure that the right people are interviewed, and that potential
findings within the goals are derived, which are formulated using terminology known and used
within the organisation. This helps coping with the so-called “CMMI speak problem”, where an
organisation doesn’t understand the questions and cannot use the findings, because of terms used
from the CMMI model that they do not understand.
Assessment team members must have excellent communication skills, have knowledge both in
the way an assessment is conducted and in the process areas being assessed, and must have
sufficient time available within the time frame. The latter is very important, as an assessment has
a fixed time schedule from start to finish. You cannot postpone a consensus or a final meeting if
you run out of time, re-planning meetings with all the people involved will almost always mean
that an assessment slips, and then loses the momentum in the organisation.
Roughly the time needed in an assessment is 40-60 hours for a team leader, and 20-40 hours for
an assessor. This depends of course on experience, and on the scope of the assessment.
2.6 Plan Assessment
The next step now that the part of the organisation to be interviewed and the process areas are
defined, is that the assessment team makes a detailed plan of the assessment. This plan includes:
• Select Interviewees
• Define Timeplan
2.6.1 Select Interviewees
The interviewees have to be selected within the defined organisation scope (groups and
roles/functions) defined earlier. The purpose of selecting interviewees is assuring that every
process area is sufficiently covered. That is, the group of people interviewed should contain
sufficient persons that perform the activities of the process areas from several angles.
Not only persons doing the work should be interviewed, but also persons ordering (and being
responsible for) the work, and persons depending on the outcome of the work, should be
interviewed. This can be compared to a 360-degree appraisal, where a person’s boss, customers
and people below him/her have to give input on the performance.
Given the previous example (lead-time in project management teams and configuration
management staff, with process areas from project management and configuration management)
the following roles could be interviewed:
• Project managers Performing project management activities
• Team leaders Idem, but for the design teams
• Configuration managers Performing configuration management activities
• Product managers Customers of a project
• Members from maintenance Taking over work and products from a project
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 5 of 12

6. In each role there should be sufficient people interviewed, usually that is 2-4 persons. This
depends on how far the activity is performed in a uniform way by different people or groups,
variance in experience and competence levels, different customers with unique expectations, etc.
When in doubt it is usually better to include an additional person initially, it is easier to exclude
that person later on when it appears that (s)he is not needed than to add an additional person when
coverage is not enough. On the other hand, some persons might perform several roles.
Again some experience from the Charging Competence Centre: Assessments done until now have
interviewed a minimum of 7 persons, and a maximum of 19. If the number becomes too big, then
reconsider the goals, organisational groups, or number of process areas involved. It may be useful
to split up an assessment, in order to have more insight into specific goals, groups or process
areas.
2.6.2 Define Timeplan
For performing the assessment, several meetings have to be planned and deadlines have to be set.
More information about the meetings can be found in step “perform assessment”, in this step only
the people attending the meeting and the timeline is defined. Please note that all meetings are
planned in advance, and that deadlines are fixed in an assessment.
The kick off meeting is attended by everybody involved in the assessment, so the interviewees,
orderer, customer, and the assessment team.
The overview presentation is optional, and open to anybody interested in an explanation of the
process area. It can also include people from outside the assessment.
A deadline must be set for submittal of the questionnaires. On this date, all interviewees must
have returned their questionnaire, and it must be checked for completeness and any unclearness.
The consensus meeting is only for the interviewees and the assessment team, others are not
allowed due to confidentiality reasons.
The final meeting is meant for everybody in the assessment. However, if the orderer doesn’t
object, then others may join the meeting to hear the results of the assessment at first hand. Please
note that the purpose is to communicate strengths and weaknesses in order to improve, and not to
judge.
At Ericsson we have experimented during the years with the time plan for this kind of
assessment. The scheme below has appeared to be most effective, both in coping with
organisational pressure and keeping people mentally involved in the assessment.
Week T – 4 weeks: First proposal for the assessment
Week T – 2 weeks: Final proposal, and all further dates and interviewees fixed
Week T: Kick off and distribution of assessment questionnaires
Week T + 1 week: Overview presentation of the process areas
Week T + 2 weeks: Deadline for having the questionnaires returned
Week T + 3 ½ weeks: Consensus meeting
Week T + 4 weeks: Final presentation
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 6 of 12

7. This schedule gives two weeks for the interviewee to answer all the questions, and 1 ½ week for
the assessment team to come up with findings. If planned in advance, and sufficient commitment
from the organisation is available, this has proved to be feasible.
2.7 Perform Assessment
An assessment starts with a kick off meeting. In this meeting the assessment is presented to the
interviewees; after this meeting they should know what they could expect from the assessment
and what will be their role.
In the kick off meeting, both the orderer and the customer should be present. They should tell the
audience why they want the assessment, and what kind of results they expect. Also they should
ask the interviewees to be open and honest, and that they will value all input and accept the
results from the assessment. The assessment team leader must assure confidentiality and non
attribution, that is that the results sent in by the interviewees will only be known to the assessment
team, and that finding will be stated in such a way that they cannot be attributed to individuals or
projects.
After the kick off, questionnaires will be sent out to the interviewees to collect information. The
questionnaires are based on the goals and activities of the CMMI model. To enable them to fill in
these questionnaires, it is good to organise an overview presentation of the process areas so that
they can better understand the goals and activities of the model. This presentation is not
mandatory, but highly recommended. Note that we deliberately do not use interview sessions,
instead we use consensus meetings.
Defining findings is a creative, and very difficult and complex part of an assessment. It is done by
going through ratings and comments from the interviewee, and look for common opinions,
contradictions, patterns, etc. Drivers for the findings are of course the goals and strategies that are
being investigated. Competence in the process areas that are investigated is essential. It is also
important to know the roles that people perform, and sometimes also their background, favorite
issues, frustrations, etc. The result will be an overview of strengths, weaknesses, and open issues
(things which are not yet clear) per process area.
As a next step a consensus meeting is held. In this meeting the preliminary findings are presented,
and feedback is sought to verify if these findings are correct, complete, and accepted by the
organisation. As a rule, every interviewee has to be in the consensus meeting; for those who
cannot attend a private meeting has to be arranged to go through the findings. You cannot risk
coming up with findings, which are not accepted by any of the interviewees, and thus will be
considered questionable after the assessment. Also, since the assessment is not actively searching
for evidence, but focuses on opinions of the organisation, it is essential that the consensus
meeting results in a common view of the main strengths and weaknesses of the organisation.
At the end of an assessment, a final presentation is given. For all process areas the strengths and
weaknesses are presented. In this meeting, the orderer and the customer of the assessment must
be present to officially accept the results and reconfirm the organisations commitment to do
whatever is needed to solve the findings. In this meeting, the interviewees are thanked for their
contribution. This final meeting is attended by all the interviewees, the orderer and customer. But
it is also good to invite others for which the results can be useful information. Basically, this
meeting is used to buy in to the organisation for the needed improvements.
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 7 of 12

8. 2.8 Support Improvements
In most assessment methods, the assessment is finished after the final meeting, and the final
report. However in this method it is required that the results of the assessment are represented to
the customer, in order to define actions.
For that purpose, a meeting is planned with the assessment team and the customer. Others, who
can assist in defining or execute improvements, are also invited to the meeting. Together they go
through the findings, and define the needed improvement actions. Most actions should be within
their scope of control, for actions outside a member of the meeting will have to assure proper
handover to a responsible.
Please note that actions are not only defined for weaknesses, but also for strengths. An
organisation that only works on improving weaknesses will never be more then average when
compared to other organisations. In order to succeed reaching business goals, an organisation
should also have strengths in which it differentiates with others.
The resulting actions of the meeting will have to be assigned to either line or project bodies. The
assessment team will not do follow up on the actions, but they will remain available if there are
further issues regarding the findings. In some occasions, a member of the assessment team did a
follow presentation on the findings some months after the assessment, to check the effect of the
actions. This can be useful, on the one hand it is a good check if and how things are progressing,
and on the other hand it is a measurement to check whether the findings and the defined actions
are still considered useful.
When a substantial part of the actions has been done, it will be good to re-assess the organisation
in order to verify if the improvements have been successful. For that purpose a new assessment
can be defined, repeating the process as has been described in these 8 steps. Given the fact that
there are frequent assessments, a new assessment reuses results from a previous assessment, like
presentations, tools, etc. More detail on this will be given in the next chapter.
3 Implementation: Tools
No method is complete without tools to support it efficiently. For this assessment method, some
tools have been developed that supported the roll out and acceptance of findings, and have turned
it into an efficient way of improving the organisation.
The term tools is used in a broad sense. What is meant is a combination of templates, checklists,
etc. The following tools are used:
• Assessment matrix
• Questionnaires
• Integrated organisation
Each tool will be explained in more detail. It is important however that a tool never exists on its
own, it is based on a method. On one hand this implies that when an organisation has different
assessment methods, the tools may not be useful. On the other hand, there may be other, more
useful tools for an organisation even when the same method is used. Be sure that the first focus is
on the method, and then on the tools, not visa versa.
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 8 of 12

9. 3.1 Assessment matrix
In an organisation that is continuously improving, there will be frequent assessments focussing on
different goals, process areas, and groups within the organisation. The assessment matrix
provides an overview of all assessments done and planned. The main purpose is strategical
planning of assessments, and assuring that over time everything considered important enough is
assessed.
CMM-I Assessment matrix ELN/V Q2/2001
Product Area XXX YYY ZZZ
Process Area
Project Management
Project Planning
Project Monitoring and Control Q4 2000 No
Integrated Project Management
Risk Management
Q1 2000 No
Quantitative Project Management Q1 2001
Support
Configuration Management Q4 2000 No
Causal Analyses and Resolution Q4 2000 Q3 2001
As you can see in the matrix, the two axes represent the organisational groups and the process
areas. A combination of the two is covered in an assessment, which is based on one of more
organisational goals. Each cell states when the last assessment has been done, or when a next
assessment is planned. It is also possible to state that certain combinations will not be assessed.
So this matrix provides an overview of all executed and planned assessment.
There are some basic rules that are used at the Charging Competence Centre. Process Areas and
groups that are considered most vital for the organisation are assessed twice a year (like “project
management” and “engineering”). Other groups directly contributing to the goals will be assessed
at least once every year (like “process management”). Staff units indirectly contributing may be
assessed less frequently.
Another rule is that every assessment has a main purpose. You either want to assess mainly to
explore, i.e. to provide insight and come up with initial findings. Or the main purpose is to verify,
so to confirm that improvement actions have resulted in effectively reaching the goals. If you
already know what is wrong, and haven’t achieved sufficient improvement yet, then there is no
need to do a new assessment.
The assessment matrix has proved to be a valuable tool in assessment planning together with the
management of our organisation. One of the main benefits has been that the matrix helped us to
limit the number of assessments, and assure that an assessment will have a specific focus, while
still knowing that in the long run nothing will be overlooked.
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 9 of 12

10. 3.2 Questionnaires
Ericsson has a long experience with questionnaires with light and class C assessments. Initially
checklists and question forms have been used based on Word. The advantage was that they were
very flexible, on the other hand collecting the questionnaires and arranging them in a way to
come up with findings took a lot of effort.
As one of the first pilots of the CMMI model, Ericsson did an official pilot of the SEI
questionnaire tool in the 4th quarter of 2000. The tool has proved to be valuable, both for the
interviewees and for the assessment team. Major advantage was the automated generation of
questionnaires based on the model, and the collection of questionnaires into combined sheets to
be used for definition of findings. Since it uses the SEI Word file of the CMMI model, upgrading
to newer versions of the model should be fairly easy. The major drawbacks were that the tool was
somewhat inflexible towards changes during the assessment, such as interviewees who are
replaced or withdrawn from the assessment, or who cannot make the deadline.
A project was done, together with the School for Information Technology in Breda (HIO) to
develop a prototype of a new questionnaire tool. The main requirements were that it should
support interviewees when filling in questions, by giving additional information and support, and
that it should help an assessment team in organizing an assessment. The latter is done by have a
set of questionnaires defined, which can be reused in multiple assessments. Also a tracking
system is defined, which shows which assessment sheets have been returned, and who has to be
reminded of their “duties”. A pilot is planned in Q2 2001, the results are not known yet.
Conclusion: There is no uniform questionnaire yet, because different questionnaires all have their
advantages and disadvantages. A strive is towards a more uniform approach, based on previous
experiences.
3.3 Integrated organisation
Though one can argue whether an organisation and its structure can be considered a tool, it has
been very important that the right organisation was available that supported this assessment and
improvement approach.
One main concept within the Charging Competence Centre organisation is that many groups have
a double responsibility. They both have to perform operational work, which is development of
products, and they also have to assure that improvements, which are needed for reaching business
goals, are executed.
To give an example: There is a group called the project office. This groups consists of project
managers, software process engineers, and project administrators. Their first responsibility is to
run high quality and controllable projects in the organisation, and directly following is the
responsibility to improve the way projects are run.
Why is that so important? The main reason is that this same combination of roles comes back in
the assessment method. As interviewees, they must give input on how projects are performed. But
starting in the consensus meeting, the other responsibility becomes important and they start
thinking about improvements needed. At the final meeting they will have some initial thought on
what is needed. When the findings are discussed in detail after the assessment, they will come up
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 10 of 12

11. with improvement actions, which they mostly will do themselves. So this learning organisation
fully integrates the assessments method as one of theirs feedback loops for improvement.
Another advantage is that these kinds of teams drive the assessments. They are the customers,
and they will be involved in selecting the goals, defining organisation scope and process areas,
and defining improvement actions. By being involved in all stages of an assessment, they greatly
improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of an assessment, including the acceptance of
findings and commitment to take any action that is needed.
4 Experiences with the assessment method
The assessment method came to exist during the assessments in Q1 of 2000. Willing to do an
assessment which was not level based, but functionally oriented, so-called sub assessments were
done for the first time. This was still using the CMM V2.0. Draft C, but taking concepts from the
CMMI V0.2. The success of these assessments led to an initial definition of the new assessment
method.
In August after the CMMI model was released, Ericsson decided to move towards the CMMI
continuous model. Based on that, pilot assessments were defined for all assessment classes within
Ericsson. The Charging Competence Centre has done an official pilot of CMMI class C
assessments. After discussing and analysing the business goals and performance, 4 assessments
were defined. Each one had its own focus, process areas, and groups within the organisation that
will be assessed. For instance, there was one assessment focussing on the project office, including
mainly project management process areas but also including organisational training and some
support process areas considered vital for project management. Another assessment includes only
one process area and group: Decision analyses and resolution in the management team of the
department.
Based on the results, an assessment plan has been made for 2001. The plan has defined 6
business-focused assessments, to be done throughout the year. At the time of the article, two
assessments were finished, and a third one was ongoing. This clearly shows the commitment of
the organisation to improve, and to use business focused CMMI assessments as the approach to
do this.
The assessment method has recently been evaluated. The advantages are:
• Very time effective (assessment time of roughly 180 hours total)
• Quick follow up after the assessment (within 1-2 weeks)
• Good follow up, most findings directly lead to actions (at least 50-70%)
Disadvantages are:
• Much overlap in the CMMI, making it sometimes difficult to focus
• Extracting findings is very difficult to learn (learning by doing)
Given these results, the decision is to continue this assessment method. Improvements which are
considered are removing some of the “sales talk” from assessments, since most people now are
familiar with the CMMI, and put more focus on overview meetings and presentations about the
contents of the process areas and thus improve understanding of the model.
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 11 of 12

12. 5 Conclusions
The business-focused assessment method has shown to be very worthwhile. Key success factors
are that assessment are easy to conduct, have a short lead time, and that the findings lead to
actions considered vital for reaching business goals.
Currently the method is being rolled out to other departments. Further on it will be fine-tuned to
fit even better in the performance management program at Ericsson, which defines goal and
measurement based improvement of the performance of organisations. Combined with
improvements in the questionnaire, the result is a solid tool useful for continuously improving the
performance of the organisation.
About the author
Ben Linders has been working in process improvement using CMM based models from 1992
onwards. At Philips he participated in CMM improvement programs for Industrial Electronics,
and for Audio. At Ericsson he was a member of the improvement team that worked for the CMM
level 3 assessment in 1995, and the level 4 assessment in 1998. Currently he is working on the
CMMI and Performance Management programs with Ericsson EuroLab Netherlands. He is a
member of several (national and international) CMM and SPI based improvement networks. He
can be reached by email: Ben.Linders@eln.ericsson.se.
References
Ref 1: From Staged CMM to Continuous CMMI (and back).
Paper by Ben Linders, in SPIder koerier januari 2001.
http://www.st-spider.nl
Ref 2: Institutionalising change, Application of CMM as a model for organisational change at
Ericsson. Paper and presentation by Bart ter Horst, presented at the IEEE EMC’99 conference.
http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/ems/confs.html
Ref 3: ARC, Assessment Requirements for CMMI, Version 1.0.
Software Engineering Institute.
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/products/assess.html
Ref 4: CMMI Models
Software Engineering Institute.
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/products/models.html
Reaching Business Goals with Value Adding CMMI Assessments, Ben Linders Page 12 of 12