If the AS-IS Assessment has to be carried out for Requirements Management Process, how one can start?

CMMI FAQ 0

24th May, 2014

Before I answer, I will provide the context of the question. This question was received from a consulting professional in USA. He had taken up a consulting assignment for conducting an assessment of the current Requirement Management processes of the client. He also had to recommend changes to the processes and handhold the client’s Business Analysts team on the implementation of the suggested practices on a new project.

The first thing to do is to develop the criteria for AS-IS Assessment. This may be developed on the basis of Requirements Management (REQM) and Requirements Development (RD) Process Areas (PAs) of CMMI applicable model (DEV, SVC or ACQ). The Related Process Areas like Project Planning, Project Monitoring and Control, Configuration Management, etc., which are mentioned under the REQM and RD PAs should also be covered while developing the criteria . The AS-IS Assessment can be conducted at the Specific Practice (SP) Level. If the absence of best practices has to be evaluated, we can develop the AS-IS criteria at the Sub-Practice Level of CMMI. We can also use ISO 12207 for inputs. We will also have to consider the methodologies being used by the organization, for e.g.:, Agile or Waterfall or both, etc. We can also conduct interviews with the respective stakeholders, in fact, we can conduct interviews with a cross-section of stakeholders – they can be directly related individuals and also indirectly related individuals. The list of interviewees can be prepared by studying the org-chart / functions-chart of the organization.

The consulting professional had liked the response given in the blog. He called it “concise and insightful”. It gave him the right direction.