What is an Appraisal?
An appraisal is an activity that helps you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your organization’s processes and to examine how closely the processes relate to CMMI best practices.
Many organizations find value in measuring their capability and performance by conducting an appraisal to identify and prioritize their business improvement efforts and eventually earning a benchmark maturity level or a capability level achievement.
Appraisals are typically conducted to:
• Determine how well the organization’s processes compare to CMMI best practices, and identify areas where improvement can be made.
• Inform external customers and suppliers about how well the organization’s processes compare to CMMI best practices.
• Meet customer contractual requirements.
Benefits of an Appraisal
Appraisal activities can help organizations at any stage of their CMMI adoption and are proven to enable more rapid and effective improvement efforts. The CMMI Appraisal Method is designed to support your CMMI journey as a proven best practice to ensure the most efficient and effective improvement results. They provide reliable, clear, consistent, and actionable focus on performance improvements that will have the most impact on the business and help build and improve capability.
An appraisal enables your organization to:
• Plan for an improvement strategy for your organization to prioritize the most important business performance improvement.
• Mitigate risks for product and service acquisition, development, delivery, and monitoring.
• Demonstrate to customers and business partners the soundness of your processes by having your appraisal results available on the Published Appraisal Results (PARS) site.
• Determine the CMMI levels that represent how well your organization’s processes conform to the CMMI.
Appraisal Method
The CMMI Appraisal Method
The CMMI Appraisal Method is the official ISACA defined appraisal method used to evaluate an organization’s processes to provide ratings related to organizational capability and performance.
The CMMI appraisal method provides a set of processes and activities for conducting appraisals relative to the CMMI model.
The CMMI Product Suite has been explicitly designed to be accessible and flexible to a broad variety of markets, organizations, and types of work. It facilitates faster, easier, and more successful adoption to address:
• Performance improvements
• Industry specific needs
• Organization or project size
• Market drivers
• Trends (e.g., business, industry)
• New or changing technologies
Method Objectives and Characteristics
The CMMI appraisal method is used to identify process implementation strengths and weaknesses as well as process persistence and habit. The method is also used to link demonstrated business performance relative to the model adoption. It incorporates best practices and is based on the features of several legacy appraisal methods.
A common, integrated appraisal method.
The new appraisal method is capable of supporting appraisals in a variety of contexts:
• Benchmarking
• Internal performance and process improvement
• Process monitoring
• Supplier selection
• Risk reduction
An efficient appraisal method.
The new appraisal method is capable of being implemented within reasonable performance constraints.
Accurate results.
The new appraisal method is capable of delivering accurate and consistent results based on appraisal objectives.
A focus on process implementation.
The new appraisal method emphasizes and ensures a collaborative, yet confidential approach to identifying performance challenges and gaps, by focusing on the process implementation versus personnel assessment.
Types of CMMI Appraisals
The CMMI Appraisal Method Definition Document describes four types of CMMI Appraisals: Benchmark, Sustainment, Evaluation, and Action Plan Reappraisal.
Each type is designed to result in findings that describe the strengths and weaknesses of your organization’s processes based on CMMI best practices. Familiarity with each type will help you make better decisions about which appraisal is right for your organization to meet business objectives and foster process improvement.
• Benchmark Appraisal
Identify opportunities for organizations to improve how they implement processes and their overall business performance.
• Sustainment Appraisal
Appraisal “check-up” that can be done following a Benchmark Appraisal to determine if the organization is maintaining their appraisal level.
• Action Plan Reappraisal
A “second-chance” for organizations that narrowly failed to achieve their targeted appraisal level in a previous appraisal.
• Evaluation Appraisal
An informal and flexible approach used to help organizations prepare for an appraisal and determine opportunities for improvement.
CMMI Levels of Capability and Performance
The maturity level or capability level of an organization provides a way to characterize its capability and performance. Experience has shown that organizations do their best when they focus their process improvement efforts on a prioritized and manageable number of practice areas at a time.
A Culture of Continuous Improvement
Your process improvement goals should always be based on your business objectives. Experience has shown that organizations benefit from achieving a level only when the focus of improvement is on business and performance results and shared objectives. When the focus is on achieving business objectives and improved performance, the performance results occur naturally and typically endure.
Capability Levels
Capability levels apply to an organization’s performance and process improvement achievements in individual practice areas. Within practice areas, the practices are organized into practice groups labeled Level 0 to Level 3 which provide an evolutionary path to performance improvement. Each level builds on the previous levels by adding new functionality or rigor resulting in increased capability.
Capability Level 0: Incomplete
• Incomplete approach to meeting the intent of the Practice Area.
• May or may not be meeting the intent of any practice.
• Inconsistent performance.
Capability Level 1: Initial
• Initial approach to meeting the intent of the Practice Area.
• Not a complete set of practices to meeting the full intent of the Practice Area.
• Addresses performance issues.
Capability Level 2: Managed
• Subsumes level 1 practices.
• Simple, but complete set of practices that address the full intent of the Practice Area.
• Does not require the use of the organizational assets.
• Identifies and monitors progress towards project performance objectives.
Capability Level 3: Defined
• Builds on level 2 practices.
• Uses organizational standards and tailoring to address project and work characteristics.
• Projects use and contribute to organization assets.
• Focuses on achieving both project and organizational performance objectives.
Maturity Levels
Maturity levels represent a staged path for an organization’s performance and process improvement efforts based on predefined sets of practice areas. Within each maturity level, the predefined set of PA’s also provide a path to performance improvement. Each maturity level builds on the previous maturity levels by adding new functionality or rigor.
Maturity Level 0: Incomplete
Ad hoc and unknown. Work may or may not get completed.
Maturity Level 1: Initial
Unpredictable and reactive. Work gets completed but is often delayed and over budget.
Maturity Level 2: Managed
Managed on the project level. Projects are planned, performed, measured, and controlled.
Maturity Level 3: Defined
Proactive, rather than reactive. Organization-wide standards provide guidance across projects, programs, and portfolios.
Maturity Level 4: Quantitatively Managed
Measured and controlled. Organization is data-driven with quantitative performance improvement objectives that are predictable and align to meet the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
Maturity Level 5: Optimizing
Stable and flexible. Organization is focused on continuous improvement and is built to pivot and respond to opportunity and change. The organization’s stability provides a platform for agility and innovation.
Published Appraisal Results System (PARS)
Organizations that wish to publish the results of their Benchmark or Sustainment appraisal types may do so on the ISACA’s CMMI PARS webpage. This website publishes the CMMI level achieved by organizations that have been appraised using the Benchmark or Sustainment appraisal types. Evaluation appraisal results are not currently published.
With permission, your appraisal results can be shared so that others can see your achievements. By knowing the appraisal results of prospective suppliers and business partners, you can make better decisions about creating business relationships with them. The appraisal results of competitors help you to understand them and compete more effectively.
View PARS- https://pars.cmmiinstitute.com/?StateId=60b205c8-115e-4e7d-a88d-f2fff020f86d
What Domain is Right for You?
CMMI is one model with multiple customized domains that apply to different business environments, enabling organizations to create a view of the model that meets their specific performance improvement needs.
First, select your organization’s challenges.
• Does your organization…DEVELOPMENT
struggle to deliver products and services that really satisfy all of your users’ needs?
often find it difficult to eliminate defects in your products and services?
want to design a product or service that gives you the edge over the competition?
• Does your organization…SERVICE
find it difficult to align resources to meet service demand?
aspire to maintain a consistently high level of customer service?
struggle to deliver services on time and within a budget?
• Does your organization…SUPPLIER MANAGMENT
spend too much time solving your problems with suppliers?
worry that your suppliers don’t understand your requirements and expectations?
want to improve your operational efficiencies by leveraging supplier’s capabilities to deliver quality solutions?
• Does your organization…SECURITY
aspire to integrate security activities sustainably in to your organization?
spend too much time reacting to threats?
want to increase employee morale and limit turnover?
• Does your organization…SAFETY
want to increase employee morale and limit turnover?
aspire to consistently provide safe products or services that gives you the edge over the competition?
find it difficult to create a foundation for consistent application of safety across development efforts?
• Does your organization struggle to maximize workforce performance due to: PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
Lack of employee skill sets and resources?
Turnover and poor morale?
Workflow bottlenecks?
• Does your organization struggle to leverage its data assets due to: DATA MANAGEMENT
Disparate silos?
No formal process or clear strategy?
Lack of support from leadership?
Little confidence in the integrity of the data?
• Does your organization struggle in an increasingly virtual world due to: VIRTUAL
Exposure to vulnerabilities?
Operational disruptions?