Interviewing senior managers is not officially part of the CMM or CMMI assessment methods. However, senior manager interviews can supply otherwise unobtainable parts of the puzzle. For example, only senior managers may be able to explain executive directives that may be impeding work in the divisions. (Sometimes the latter include constraints put upon a managing director by a larger company of which the organization is a part.)
Senior managers are ultimately responsible for ensuring that process improvement takes place. They also have a unique role in understanding what needs to be changed and how to prioritize those changes. It is therefore very useful to talk to them, especially at a point after all the other interviews have taken place.
The assessment sponsor is encouraged to explain what plans he has for the organization (strategically and tactically) and what problems he sees from his perspective. Any clear trends (or issues) that have emerged from other interviews should be brought up with him, and he should be encouraged to discuss them from his perspective. He may also be able to give the team the names of other people who can also provide a global understanding of the trends that have emerged from the assessment.
When assessed, Organization N was clearly performing at a very high maturity level. However, when questions about project cost estimates came up, not much information seemed to be available. Only the senior executive understood what the team was asking for, and he directed them to a small group of managers, some of whom had already been interviewed but had not touched on the issue. It turned out that the managers had not been communicative about cost estimating because the information was company-confidential. Had it not been for the senior executive, though, the assessment team would have come to a wrong conclusion about the maturity of the organization.
Executives from different organization areas, such as finance, contracts, manufacturing, human resources, and so on, are also important to include in interviews (especially the financial officer). Investing in process improvement can save a great deal of money in the long run, and when the financial officer understands this, he or she may become a valuable advocate for process improvement.
In some companies, manufacturing divisions will have been performing process-improvement activities for quite some time. (Many process-improvement principles were first developed to improve manufacturing.)
Process improvement impacts all areas of a company. The more areas that are included in an assessment, the more effective the assessment will be for the whole organization.
During an assessment of Company Y, all the executive vice presidents (personnel, contracts, manufacturing, engineering, finance, and legal services) were interviewed as a group. Each was asked what he thought about process improvement. The only executive to clearly articulate an answer was the executive vice president of manufacturing. Manufacturing had worked on process improvement for the previous five years. They had set up a Six-Sigma program and had substantially improved their performance and the company’s profit. The other executives had vaguely known this was occurring, but they now listened attentively to the details of the division’s success. The interview session provided significant support for the software process-improvement effort.