Service Organizations Jump on the CMMI Bandwagon!

Customized for the unique needs of the services industry, SEI is ready to launch a new CMMI model in 2009. Don’t miss this opportunity to take a sneak peek!

In March of 2009, Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) will officially release a new CMMI model, dubbed CMMI-SVC, for those organizations in the services industry. These organizations cover a wide net of services and include organizations in the healthcare, educational, financial services maintenance, logistics, Information Technology industries and others.

Why Services, Why Now?

Without a doubt, the numbers, themselves, are compelling. The service sector comprises more than 80 percent of both the American and the global economy. Further, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spends more than 50 percent of its budget – or $146 billion dollars in FY2006 - on services alone. As a direct result, the SEI believes that demand for process improvement in services will most likely grow in the coming years. In fact, some customers are even requesting that service providers possess a CMMI rating. “One thing we look for before we build a new model is consensus among the intended users on what the right practices may be,” says Eileen Forrester, the SEI lead of CMMI-SVC and Senior Member of the Technical Staff in SEI’s Software Engineering Process Management Program. “In the past, we thought that this particular topic was not appropriate for a whole scope within CMMI. Previously, it had to be part of a wider scope for us to possibly consider it.”

While other service models do exist, these models do not include what the CMMI model covers. Additionally, while organizations often implement their own solutions, these applications are not designed for any services other than IT. As a direct result, in 2004, a group of volunteer organizations approached SEI — all CMMI-DEV users — about working together to build a new model for services.

“That request did get our attention,” Forrester says. “And we also were starting to see parts of the community develop a consensus on appropriate best practices as well,” continued Forrester.

Basics of the Services Model

When the team first formed, members found the model difficult to use within a service environment. Consequently, these members asked the SEI to implement changes that would make the development model more user-friendly. Consequently, in late 2005, the team began work on the new model, and shortly afterwards in October of 2006, a review draft was available. After a number of revisions, the CMMI-SVC v1.2 model now includes sixteen core PAs, one shared PA, and seven service-specific PAs.

The Seven Service-Specific PAs are as Follows:

• Capacity and Availability Management - relates to planning and monitoring to ensure that the proper resources (therapists, drugs, and pharmacists) are available on a regular basis – using a healthcare setting as an example.
• Service Continuity – refers to staff creating and rehearsing a plan that deals with restoring services after a natural disaster for example.
• Service System Development - involves services that are related to infrastructure, people, processes, and consumable products.
• Strategic Service Management - relates to creating a variety of standard pharmaceutical and respiratory services to meet consumer needs – as well as analyzing data from markets and customers to ensure needs are met.
• Service System Transition - focuses on complying with new laws - while continuing to provide service concurrently.
• Service Delivery - relates to processes such as preparing and delivering drugs, preparing a schedule of pharmacists, monitoring drug supplies and tracking customer satisfaction.
• Incident Resolution and Prevention - refers to problems that can include delivering the wrong dosage of medication to patients.