More and more organizations use CMMI not just for reaching a particular maturity level, but to foster real process improvement and therefore achieving business excellence. The authors will provide experiences from using CMMI as guidance and framework for implementing a process improvement project in a U.S. aerospace contracting organization.

The authors will present key experiences with their innovative tools-based approach to process definition and sustainable process improvement. A crucial success factor proved to be the upfront design of a process architecture and metamodel that was optimized for the requirements of the organization.

By managing all process assets in a single repository, an organization is able to create the process definition in a much more agile way compared to using standard office tools. Furthermore, having all process assets in a database improves consistency and quality of the process definition while reducing manual overhead.

The authors will share experiences of how the process team is able to collaboratively enhance and improve the process definition in an iterative way. This enables immediate piloting of process improvements and incorporating feedback as soon as possible. By using baselining capabilities of the process management platform, the team has control over process changes and at the same time provides project teams with process snapshots for pilot implementation.

The authors will present how the improvement project is able to work in short, agile cycles and to concentrate on real improvements instead of being slowed down by process administration overhead. From a consultant perspective, the chosen agile and tools-supported approach enables the organization to focus on results and deliver a higher quality of service.