Sponsorship: The senior manager responsible for the assessment ideally should be:
Dissatisfied with the current state.
Willing to demonstrate the type of public support necessary to convey strong organizational commitment to the assessment.
Willing to commit resources to the assessment and to follow-up improvement activities.
Willing to support improvement plans through enough resources and power.
Willing to assure that progress and problems will be tracked during follow-up improvement.
Aware of the personal, organizational, and political costs of the technical and cultural changes that flow from assessments and constitute the first step of long-term improvement.
Resistance-Free: Assessments should be undertaken when the organization is informed and prepared for the assessment effect. Ideally:
Practitioners see a need for improvement.
Managers at all levels see a need for process improvement.
Communication between management and practitioners is clear and direct.
Management understands the costs of process improvement in time and personnel to be reasonable.
Practitioners are confident that management will provide support (i.e., time, money, personnel not expected to do the job in their spare time) to help improve processes.
Management understands the anticipated impact initially on cost and schedule of projects and supports process improvement.
Synergy:
Groups in the organization can communicate with each other.
Managers are prepared to listen to and deal with differences in opinion.
Organizational Issues:
Not all projects are in a fire-fighting mode so that the organization can manage changes that come as a result of the assessment.
The organization has clear lines of responsibility and authority.
The organization provides employees the latitude to make mistakes and encourages risk-taking.
When changes are introduced, there are negative consequences for failing to support the changes.
When management announces a strategic directive, the organization acts on it.
Managers don’t resist making changes when turf or control may be at stake, because the corporate goal always has priority over the goals of individuals.
Score each question:
- Hardly at all
- To a mild extent
- To a moderate extent
- To a great extent
Total each section’s scores. Then list the total score for each section. A Sponsorship score of 9 or lower, a Culture score of 3 or lower, a Resistance score of 17 or lower, a Synergy score of 5 or lower, and an Organizational Issues score of 12 or lower means the organization should reconsider the time for an assessment.
High marks in the categories of Sponsorship and Culture are critical for conducting an assessment. The sponsor, whether it is the president, managing director, or general manager, must be willing to commit resources not only for an assessment but also for the follow-up improvement activities. Otherwise, the considerable expense of any assessment will be wasted.
Resistance, Synergy, and Organizational Culture are also critical criteria for initiating and implementing a process improvement program. If these areas are rated low, and Sponsorship and Culture are rated high enough to indicate that the time is right for an assessment, the organization would want the assessment team to look into these areas as well as the reference model. How entrenched is the organization in a "blame culture?" Are people afraid to tell the next level of management there is a problem? Is the process improvement effort considered completely distinct from the organization’s business? Does it suffer when there is a choice? Do managers feel that process improvement is not their own but rather a developer’s problem? Are the people leading the process improvement effort seen as necessary experts or as people without another job?
The organization can request that the assessment team suggest how the organization should proceed after the assessment.