On Becoming a Winning Organization
Many of this month’s QUICK articles highlight winning organizations across the world in a variety of areas. We can be sure that these accolades were not bestowed for accidental excellence, for stumbling upon improvements or for brief flashes of brilliance. They were the result of diligent effort over extended periods following a prescribed set of steps and processes.
Many of GP’s clients are setting about improving their product or service development performance by implementing the Integrated Capability Maturity Model (CMMI). There is some additional work involved to be sure in becoming CMMI compliant, but the payback is improved quality of engineering, of the management of product development programs and, as a result, of end products. That improved quality results from the improved ability to set, predict, track and correct budgets and schedules. Success in becoming CMMI accredited comes from finding, codifying, implementing and measuring the very best current practices and organizational knowledge.
CMMI is also not a standalone effort as implied by Mellat-Parast, Jones, and Adams. It meshes closely with Lean, standardized work, and continuous improvement. CMMI does not define specific daily actions. It does not specify highly defined results, methods or reports. It does not replace ISO or Lean. It does not have a direct impact on the way companies actually make and ship products. What it does is ask organizations if they have standard approaches to almost 200 specific practices and then checks to see that they do what they say they do.
Organizations that are clear about what they should be doing on a daily and on a strategic level and then measuring compliance to their commitments have the stuff of which awards are made. Those that take those measures and continuously improve them may well find themselves in QUICK one day!
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