June 5, 2013

SPECIAL CMMI FOR SERVICES (CMMI-SVC) DOUBLE FEATURE

Presentation #1

CMMI for Services

CMMI doesn’t have to mean you turn into the undead. While one may feel like a vampire during an adoption of practices based on the framework, the guidance is a valuable tool for internal or external projects for continued improvement.

This presentation will revolve around how CMMI-SVC was implemented based on a prior implementation of the ISO 20000-1:2011 standard and CMMI for Development from a practitioner and advisor, who jointly integrated the practices with the CMMI framework. The presentation will be delivered in an informal manner and will focus on lessons learned from a real world application. Lastly, the presentation is a good example of how different perspectives are often effective and encourage buy-in over forcing an implementation. Questions and discussions will be considered a welcome part of the presentation.

Beth Leonard

Digital Management Inc.

Ms. Beth Leonard is the Corporate Quality Assurance Vice President for Digital Management, Inc. (DMI), one of the fastest growing Government contractors in Washington, DC and recently ranked #37 of the Fast 50 firms in Washington Technology. Beth has over 16 years of quality assurance and process improvement experience across the government contracting industry. In conjunction, she has previously held positions in the areas of program/project management, proposal management, operations/help desk, and all support functions within the software development lifecycle. Her depth and breadth of knowledge enables her to implement realistic best practices not only at the project level, but across organizations for management and corporate support. Currently, Beth is responsible for DMI’s Quality Center of Excellence (QCoE). The QCoE is responsible for maintaining Quality and Process programs, based on best practices from ISO and the CMMI frameworks. 

DMI has had successful appraisals for both CMMI for Services Maturity Level 3 and CMMI for Development Maturity Level 3. Additionally, DMI holds multiple ISO certifications for quality, service, and information security management.

Heather Reis

Integration Technologies Group, Inc

Ms. Heather Reis has an accomplished background in relationship management, process improvement methodologies, consulting operations and auditing services. Heather is the Director of Quality Standards and Performance for Integration Technologies Group (ITG) and since 2011, responsibilities include the marketing, sales, project management and technical support to ensure the successful completion of projects related to various frameworks for implementing customer process improvement initiatives. Additionally, Heather is responsible for overseeing ITG’s internal Best Practices’ program. 

Presentation #2

CMMI vs. Zombies: How CMMI-SVC is Helping in the Current Zombie Apocalypse

The Zombie Apocalypse is here. Are you ready?

Until now, no one has provided a detailed narrative of how the CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC) is being used to respond to the potential breakdown of modern society due to a zombie infestation. This presentation fills that glaring gap.

Of course, parts of this talk will largely be delivered with tongue planted firmly in cheek. However, the entertainment factor provided by marrying a hot pop culture topic (zombies!) with the CMMI will help to keep the audience interested, involved, and occasionally amused. More importantly, however, this fictional zombie case study will provide valuable takeaways relevant to real-life operations such as call centers and emergency response teams.

This presentation will revolve around a scenario where the unthinkable has started happening right here in DC metro area: a zombie virus is rapidly spreading through the area, transforming much of the population into the flesh-eating undead! To make matters worse, reports of other outbreaks around the country are increasing with alarming frequency. A Zombie Emergency Response Operations team (ZERO) has been formed to deal with the outbreak and its consequences; its duties include killing zombies, providing emergency medical service, and of course conducting zombie awareness presentations.

The talk will focus largely upon the seven service-specific process areas within the CMMI for Services. For each of these process areas, its purpose will be reviewed and its applicability to the scenario will be detailed. For example, the discussion of Capacity and Availability Management will include important capacity measures (e.g., the number of calls that can be simultaneously handled by the area's phone system), availability measures (e.g., availability of zombie hunters, ammunition, and vehicles), and service system representations (e.g., formulas predicting the spread of the virus).

The presentation will be delivered in an engaging, non-death-by-slide style, using visuals and even music extensively to emphasize key points. It will be appropriate for people completely new to the CMMI for Services; but, even veterans of CMMI-SVC will find the tie-in from the scenario to the model to be interesting and potentially valuable. All attendees, regardless of their prior experience, will walk away with a better understanding of the CMMI for Services, especially the seven service-specific process areas.

 Bill Smith

President and CEO, Leading Edge Process Consultants

Bill Smith is President and CEO of Leading Edge Process Consultants, a small CMMI Institute Partner located in Reston, Virginia.

Passionate about training, Bill has taught the official Introduction to CMMI course 79 times to over 1416 students at 45 locations across America – more than anyone else in the world. He’s known for his wry sense of humor, amusing yet relevant anecdotes, and ultra-high levels of student satisfaction.

Bill has guided multiple organizations to CMMI or SW-CMM maturity levels and served on a half-dozen Engineering Process Groups. His career has included jobs as artificial intelligence programmer (IBM) and systems engineer (EDS).  Overall, he has 28 years of software and systems engineering experience in management and technical positions, including several years of software design and programming.

In 2010, Bill was honored as the Software Engineering Institute's Outstanding Member Representative. He also received an Outstanding Presentation award at each of the NDIA CMMI Technology Conferences from 2008 through 2010.  Bill designed and moderates CMMI Rocks!, a social network exclusively available to his former students, and he regularly dispenses CMMI commentary on twitter and his company Facebook page.

Mr. Smith has an M.S. in Information Science (University of Pittsburgh) and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics (Carnegie Mellon University).