Assessments do not reflect the way the members of an organization think things work or the way the organization’s paperwork says things theoretically ought to work. Based on separate interviews with staff at every level, they represent the way things really do work.
Assessments have taken the place of audits in the engineering community because audits have traditionally relied on a company’s paper records of how things ought to work, whereas assessments rely on in-depth and cross-referencing interviews with practitioners that (whether or not the practitioners are happy to disclose it) get at how things really happen.
Assessments do not simply tell you the way one part of an organization works on its own. Instead they explain the way a part of the organization works within an organizational structure and an organizational culture, based on a sophisticated understanding of how the software development cycle works in the most successful companies around the world. An assessment’s account of how an organization works is thus not merely descriptive. Assessment analysis depends on criteria established by a reference model.
Nobody likes the idea of being compared to a theoretical model. However, the models used by assessments are integrated global descriptions of how many good practices fit together, and assessments need to have a picture of the whole enterprise in mind, not just a catalogue of individual good practices. Assessment methodologies are never perfect, and they can sometimes even seem incomprehensible or perverse. But they remain the best available means of facilitating more productive, more reliable, and more profitable organizations. People apply assessments best when they understand their limitations, their logic, and their practical payoff.