In the March 2007 I will start a new *little* Information Technology company.
I'm very interested to "Maturity Model" topic.
The company has the following reasonable plan of annual sales:
- year 2007, 250,000 Euros of annual sales (with 3 customers)
- year 2008, 400,000 Euros of annual sales (with about 5..6 customers)
The company has 3 Senior Partner, and my projects tipically are 3-12 months in duration and include three-ten developers/architects, my customers generally are middle-big IT System Integrator (with my new company I will work for them as external enterprise), the final customer are banks, insurances companies, companies that have large storage infrastructures.
My questions are:
a) Is it reasonable think for this little numbers (less then 1 million of annual sales, less then 15 employees, less 10 customers...) a path for CMMI compliance?
b) How much money in direct cost (I mean: exluded the time needs for Senior Partners) is reasonable to forecast for reach the CMMI compliance (almost level 2)? (an order of magnitude should be sufficient...)
Many thanks for any hint,
Gabriele
Saving Changes...
Sort By:
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Gabriele, to be CMMI compliant isn't a question of reasonableness but more a question of why? At what level will compliance add value to the company's ability to grow and mature? It might that at Level 3 of compliance you have the disciplines needed to insure quality outcomes for your clients. Is there a marketing value to being able to tout that your work is at level 5? By determining the value to the company and its clients I believe the answer will come. Good Luck Saving Changes...
Hi MIchael, thanks for your reply. Yes, you have right, "why?" question is better then "is it reasonable?". Here I give the responses to this questions, and if you are other hints its are welcome. I have already "signed" the contracts of 2006's years, and also for 2007 I know the customer/contracts (almost for all). And I have these customers without the need of a Maturity Model. But I give a lot of *substantials* advantage to a Maturity Model (for example: increase productivity, reduce cost of development, reduce development risk...) and all of above advantages are welcome in my company. I have not the needs of other tipical CMMI's advantage (respond to Government procurement requirements), but the others benefits maybe are sufficient. And the other *big* reason for my interest to Maturity Model is this one: in the first 2 year of my company's activity I have founded already my market(I mean: customers), but for the next years I would like increase its, and I'm seeing that the Maturity Model and overall Project Management's topics are argument very "hot" in the market, I think that if I will invest the revenues's of 2006/2007 years in this areas I can grown my market. Other information: you have right, in my knowledge (I am a newbie of CMMI) and in my possible new market Level 3 of compliance should be sufficient, and level 5 maybe is not needs. For above reasons (in short: I want take *substantial* advantages/benefits from a Maturity Model exploiting the fact that I am a *start-up* company, and for me the Best Practices/Guidelines are precious inputs for my managers (I, two partners and other 2 consultants:), its are *not* constraints that a already existing company/organization must be satisfy) I'm collecting more information possible on Maturity Models. And I have not a clear idea if revenues of first two years can "to finance" a path for CMMI...if a Manager's project team of maximum 5 people it's sufficient..., and also if in the market already exists other very *little* companies that adopt CMMI (only for substantial advantage, not for customer needs (I mean: "customer needs"="I found the customer only if I'm CMMI compliant", this one is *not* my case))
I understand that I have not been short in this my reply but I have a lot of investigation to do on CMMI, in every case thanks.
Gabriele
Saving Changes...
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Gabriele, nicely done on getting a year of contracts signed. If you are doing custom development then the quality of the design specifications will be very important in your success. The process you follow will be equally important because getting requirements right trumps great design specs if they don't reflect the REAL needs of the customer.
From a design specification view point I would think level 3 would be sufficient. If you like I would be happy to send you my workshop slides on process improvement which will provide you some insights into the getting requirements right. Just email me at [email protected] and I will email them to you.
