Part of the assessment team’s job is to brief the members of the organization who will be participating in the coming onsite assessment. This briefing takes place in the opening Assessment presentation (discussed in Kick-Off Meeting and Other Presentations) and may be supplemented by a pre-onsite assessment participants briefing. (In organizations having previous experience with assessments, the assessments participants briefing may be delivered by organization personnel rather than by members of the assessment team.)
Pre-Onsite Assessment Participants Briefing
In simple terms, an assessment participants briefing (APB) is a one- or two-hour presentation to the staff of the organization who will be participating in the assessment. The briefing explains why an organization has undertaken an assessment, the basic principles behind process improvement, and what will happen before, during, and after an assessment. The briefing should emphasize the kinds of questions each participant will be asked and especially that there are no right or wrong answers. Assessments are about understanding how things work and how they might work better, not about passing or failing. The staff should be told that if they do not understand a question, they should say so, and they should be reminded that not everyone will be able to answer all questions. They should also be informed about the materials that they should bring to an interview. Finally, they should understand that the team will be taking notes but the participants should not, that all interviews are confidential, and that both the assessment team and the people being assessed are under a confidentiality agreement.
The objective of the assessment participants briefing is to set expectations for the assessment. Without the proper setting of expectations, the assessment can fail before the team arrives onsite. The presentation will tell the participants the role of the model and assessments in process improvement, the business value of moving up in maturity level, the objectives and principles of this assessment, the activity flow of the assessment, and specific participant schedules (where each person should be and when). It also will tell them whom they should contact if they have any questions or difficulties.
The assessment participants briefing is interactive, and questions are encouraged.
The organization’s site coordinator or a designated briefer from the assessment team gives the details about the scheduled activities. Copies of the master schedule are distributed to each participant in the assessment, and any questions about the schedule are answered. Participants are reminded of the items they should bring with them to the interviews.
A more educational briefing may be needed to talk about model terms in local terminology. In principle, it is the assessment team’s job to translate the model terminology for the participants, and participants are not expected to know the model. However, in reality, it helps if the participants have some knowledge of the model being used. Also because the organization has chosen a particular model to follow, it would make sense for the people in the organization to have an understanding of the model.
It is common in assessments for several interviews to take place in which the participants do not understand what is being asked of them. They may also say they do not perform a particular activity even though that might not be the case. Something as simple as the question "Does your manager show you or ask you to review a project plan?’ may cause problems (because some organizations do not use the phrase "project plan"). What is important is not the plan’s name but rather whether the participants perform a planning function. A CMM or CMMI briefing prior to the assessment allows both the terms and their ambiguities to be discussed, and potential questions can be "translated" into the organization’s language.
The sponsor needs to stress the importance of honesty and of laying all the issues on the table. The sponsor’s attendance at an assessment participants briefing helps, but the sponsor can also send a strong message via a substitute. It is better for the sponsor to be there, but if he or she can only be at this briefing or the opening meeting, priority is given to the opening meeting of the assessment.
Some duplication is necessary between the assessment participants briefing and the opening meeting. These two meetings may be combined if the organization is very familiar with process improvement and has had previous assessments.
The assessment team needs to know who attends these meetings. If a person misses the meeting, he will need to be briefed at the start of his interview, and that will need to be planned into the interview time slot.
For a SCAMPI assessment, the preparation of participants may be accomplished via video/teleconferencing if necessary. For SCAMPI orientation, the documentation for Process Implementation Indicators (PIIs) and any specific instruments to be used during the assessment are needed. The appropriate people within the organization then can document the initial objective evidence to be used in the assessment.
Because a SCAMPI assessment can be used in several ways, internal process improvement, or supplier selection, different types of orientation may be necessary. For internal process improvement, what has been discussed previously applies. Like the CBA IPI assessment, a strong management sponsorship of the upcoming assessment is needed and should be demonstrated to the participants.
For supplier selection, the SCAMPI assessment team may visit multiple organizations and quite possibly only one organization will be selected for the competition.
For SCAMPI assessments, as with the CBA IPI, preparing assessment participants includes informing them of the need to provide accurate and complete information on instruments. This helps to ensure sufficient coverage of the CMMI model practices and reduces the amount of time necessary for follow-up interviews. The investment in having complete instrumentssuch as PIIs, questionnaires, or mapping tableswill help not only in the present assessment but also the organization’s future assessments.
There are several key points to consider in selecting the needed orientation level and when to have it provided to the organization:
Organizational experience If the organization has not had experience with process improvement concepts and has never been exposed to the model, there is a need for orientation in the fundamental concepts. Explanation and examples about what is meant by the different concepts within the model can prove very beneficial to the organization so that its members can begin to think about how they do things in relation to the model.
Maturity level of the organization Although the maturity level of the organization will not always be obvious prior to an assessment, the experience level discussed previously will provide some insight. Organizations that are struggling with concepts at the repeatable level in the CMM or CMMI staged representation will gain more from explanations of those concepts and less from explanation of concepts associated with the managed and defined levels.
Organization size The number of employees who are impacted by the conduct of an assessment will drive the way orientation should be carried out. For a company of 100 employees, it may indeed be more feasible to gather everyone in an auditorium for an orientation session. For a company of 100,000 employees, this is simply impractical. These considerations also impact the selection of assessment participants.