Section 12.1.  Introduction: After an Assessment

12.1. Introduction: After an Assessment After an assessment, either euphoria or shock reigns. Both should quickly give way to a disciplined plan to build on the momentum of the assessment and to follow up its findings and recommendations by putting in place an organization to institute necessary changes. If too much time passes, this momentumand an assessment's power to motivate changeevaporates. This chapter concerns procedures for establishing a post-assessment action plan and addresses crucial questions related to who drives such planning and how it unfolds: 12.1 What happens after an assessment? 12.2 Where does a disciplined post-assessment plan come from? Who drives it? Who makes it work? 12.3 How ambitious should it be? What should its duration be? 12.4 What does it look like? How must it unfold? In what spirit should it be undertaken? 12.5 After a post-assessment plan has been completed, how do you manage the introduction of improved processes? The chapter and the book conclude with a prolonged case study (Section 12.6) of one successful company that, following a disconcerting Level 2 assessment, put in motion first a one-year plan to institute the assessment's recommendations and then a multi-year plan of reiterated assessments. They are now Level 5, and the increases in productivity that they have reported (47%) are truly impressive. This chapter is addressed to senior managers who put follow-up action plans in motion and to the managers and personnel who must carry the plans out. Organizations need to see both assessments and maturity levels as means to business goals or as toolkits to improve, not as tests to be passed. This is true not only when things go badly but also when they go well. If an organization congratulates itself because it has "made it" to a higher rung on the maturity ladder, it may not have the will to keep on improving and may slip backwards in the near future [Eickelman 03]. If an organization keeps the connection clear between process improvement and substantial payoffs in reliability and profit, it will avoid the pitfalls both of defensiveness and smugness and will resist trying to game the next assessment or resting on its laurels from the last one. Process improvement takes hold when an organization begins to understand that improvement means not just progressing up an artificial maturity scale but also enhanced profits and efficiency in the business. After an assessment, organizations will resist planning improvements for the sake of their "grade" on the next assessment but will welcome plans that make clear how they will make their products faster, cheaper, and better. When an improvement is suggested after an assessment, therefore, it ideally should become the responsibility of the part of the organization that will be enhanced by the change. This suborganization should be able to tailor the change to its own requirements and needs to be able to experience first-hand the difference that the change will make. In this way, project managers will eventually come to expect that process improvement and success go hand-in-hand. This change in attitude should be encouraged at all levels of the organization. Post-assessment improvement work is not something that distracts from "real work"it's a way to help everyone work better. 12.1.1. What Happens the First Day After an Assessment After an assessment, either an organization is demoralized because it has been judged worse than it thought it was, or it is euphoric because it has been judged better than it dared hope it could be. Neither emotion leads to change. It is the job of the assessment sponsor to pick up the pieces, convene a meeting of participants and change agents, and systematically analyze the results of the assessment and its recommendations. Then, just as in any other project, the job must be broken down, authority must be delegated, jobs must be assigned, and estimations must be made of what needs doing, what it will cost in effort and money, and how long it will take. The day after a Level 3 assessment showed serious problems in how most of Organization X's processes were created and followed, the sponsor scheduled a retreat that included the internal assessment team members, the director of software engineering, all the project software engineering managers, and the SEPG manager and his staff, along with other key personnel. They took a half-day for a post-mortem, and then the sponsor drew up the beginnings of a plan that considered the assessment's findings and recommendations that they accepted point-by-point. The SEPG team then wrote up the points, and the list was reviewed, approved, and prioritized by a Management Steering Committee. The assessment sponsor then presented the plan to the company president and his VPs, who reviewed and approved the plan. Between two weeks and a month later, the plan had started to be implemented. Counter-Example: The day after an assessment showed that Organization Y had satisfied all Level 2 PAs, the organization was paralyzed. The senior manager, enthusiastic but unengaged, talked about hiring a process improvement manager to lead the post-assessment improvement plan. But because he and his subordinates felt good about the state of the assessment, there was nothing urgent about his plans. Two months later, no one had been hired, and only a few people in the organization were still thinking about what the assessment had shown and what should be done next. Because a Level 2 assessment is really about solidifying management practices, it is a transitional exercise. If too much time is allowed to elapse, the provisional processes upon which the improvements must be built start to change. In the case of Organization Y, the danger was real and inevitable. Six months later, it was unclear whether a second assessment would find things as good as they were.