A Process Management Process Area at Maturity Level 4

The purpose of Organizational Process Performance (OPP) is to establish and maintain a quantitative understanding of the performance of selected processes in the organization’s set of standard processes in support of achieving quality and process performance objectives, and to provide process performance data, baselines, and models to quantitatively manage the organization’s projects.

The Organizational Process Performance process area involves the following activities:

· Establishing organizational quantitative quality and process performance objectives based on business objectives (See the definition of “quality and process performance objectives” in the glossary.)

· Selecting processes or subprocesses for process performance analyses

· Establishing definitions of the measures to be used in process performance analyses (See the definition of “process performance” in the glossary.)

· Establishing process performance baselines and process performance models (See the definitions of “process performance baselines” and “process performance models” in the glossary.)

The collection and analysis of the data and creation of the process performance baselines and models can be performed at different levels of the organization, including individual projects or groups of related projects as appropriate based on the needs of the projects and organization.

The common measures for the organization consist of process and product measures that can be used to characterize the actual performance of processes in the organization’s individual projects. By analyzing the resulting measurements, a distribution or range of results can be established that characterize the expected performance of the process when used on an individual project.

Measuring quality and process performance can involve combining existing measures into additional derived measures to provide more insight into overall efficiency and effectiveness at a project or organization level. The analysis at the organization level can be used to study productivity, improve efficiencies, and increase throughput across projects in the organization.

The expected process performance can be used in establishing the project’s quality and process performance objectives and can be used as a baseline against which actual project performance can be compared. This information is used to quantitatively manage the project. Each quantitatively managed project, in turn, provides actual performance results that become a part of organizational process assets that are made available to all projects.

Process performance models are used to represent past and current process performance and to predict future results of the process. For example, the latent defects in the delivered product can be predicted using measurements of work product attributes such as complexity and process attributes such as preparation time for peer reviews.

When the organization has sufficient measures, data, and analytical techniques for critical process, product, and service characteristics, it is able to do the following:

· Determine whether processes are behaving consistently or have stable trends (i.e., are predictable)

· Identify processes in which performance is within natural bounds that are consistent across projects and could potentially be aggregated

· Identify processes that show unusual (e.g., sporadic, unpredictable) behavior

· Identify aspects of processes that can be improved in the organization’s set of standard processes

· Identify the implementation of a process that performs best

This process area interfaces with and supports the implementation of other high maturity process areas. The assets established and maintained as part of implementing this process area (e.g., the measures to be used to characterize subprocess behavior, process performance baselines, process performance models) are inputs to the quantitative project management, causal analysis and resolution, and organizational performance management processes in support of the analyses described there. Quantitative project management processes provide the quality and process performance data needed to maintain the assets described in this process area.

Refer to the Measurement and Analysis process area for more information about specifying measures, obtaining measurement data, and analyzing measurement data.

Refer to the Organizational Performance Management process area for more information about proactively managing the organization’s performance to meet its business objectives.

Refer to the Quantitative Project Management process area for more information about quantitatively managing the project to achieve the project’s established quality and process performance objectives.

Specific Goal and Practice Summary

SG 1 Establish Performance Baselines and Models

SP 1.1       Establish Quality and Process Performance Objectives

SP 1.2       Select Processes

SP 1.3       Establish Process Performance Measures

SP 1.4       Analyze Process Performance and Establish Process Performance Baselines

SP 1.5       Establish Process Performance Models