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Reengineering CMM

CMM has progressed along the statistical control path perhaps as far as it can go. Now it must evolve, and to evolve, it may need to go through a process of totally rethinking its mission.

For one thing, CMM must become less document-centered. Most of the systems that we are building today for our customers are built using electronic workflow approaches. Our customers are after systems that minimize data entry, forms, meaningless approvals, and paper. They are after us to build systems that are rapidly adaptable to changes in business practices and technology. CMM must be looked at in the same vein. One of the lessons that CMM should be learning from agile development is minimalism. What's the minimum we can do to produce a quality product?

Another thing that CMM must do is to emphasize collaboration. Software development is all about knowledge management, and knowledge ultimately rests in the heads of people. CMM needs to become more people-centric as opposed to organization-centric or management-centric. Increasingly, people in other disciplines have been coming up with better, more exciting environments in which to work. The hardware people, for example, have been working on concurrent engineering approaches for a long time now, and computer-aided design and manufacturing are state-of-the-art. CMM should be looking to provide a more automated management umbrella that makes agile software development the norm.

Finally, CMM must stress speed as well as quality. The world is simply moving too fast to wait for quality software to finally spill over the last waterfall.