a stay at home scampi appraisal

7/30/2019 A Stay at Home SCAMPI Appraisal

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Copyright ©2009 Accenture and SEI All Rights Reserved. See last slide for SEI Trademark and Permissions.Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of. Accenture®CMMI is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University



- ay a ome Appraisal?


Accenture – SEI - 2010



•Objectives

- What we wanted to accomplish

- What we wanted to demonstrate was possible

•What we did

- How did we do that?

•How it worked

- Lessons learned (positive and negative)

•Caveats

- Sta in within the method

3Copyright ©2009 Accenture All Rights Reserved.



•Travel is a significant cost in the appraisal of large organizations (travelex enses loss of time

•Distributing the appraisal team enables appraisal team members to stay intheir home office or close to their home office… or even stay home!

•Distributing the appraisal team also means no travel for project participants.

• Interviews are conducted remotely using conference calls or video.

Less travel means duration is not an issue




1.Defining a distributed appraisal (would I know it if I saw it?)

2.Determnng t e eas ty o t s approac to a SCAMPI

3.Understanding what works well and what issues this type of appraisalresents

4.Understanding what changes we would have to make to our planning and

conduct phases if we continue this approach

5.Determining the ROI

6.Understanding how people might try to “game the system” if this were

a owe

In other words what is it and does it work?




•A SCAMPI appraisal event where all or some of the appraisal team (ATLand ATMs are not co-located durin the conduct a raisal hase of the

SCAMPI.




• We set up a first pilot in order to determine feasibility of the approach.

• We ent e requre c anges to our current pannng an con uct p ase

processes:

- here is a need for local site coordinators dealin with local lo istics for appraisal team members

- There is a need for a local “Site Lead” to act as the Lead Appraiser proxy

- Meetings are replaced by conference call or video conference

- ogs c : er ec ne wor connec on an e ep one nes are requre osupport voice and data exchange

- Efficient access to a raisal data must be uaranteed at all time to allteam members




• We identified risks associated with the distribution of appraisal teammembers and defined miti ation actions. Team d namic could be affected

by :- The lack of informal communication

- Cultural difference

- Time zone difference

• We shared the concept with the SEI Appraisal Team:

- SEI and Accenture agreed to jointly pilot the approach




•The pilot was conducted in J ul 2009 to validate the

approach and identify andremediate risks

Rome (Italy) and Bangalore

(India) Appraisal Team

• ro ec par c pan s werelocated in

- Italy : Turin, Rome, Parma,

on erenc ngSystem

Turin HyderabadParma Participants

Naples

- Czech Republic : PraguePrague

ap es

Rome

-




•Time zone difference between Italy and India is 4h30.•Time difference between Italy and US was 6h (DC) and 9h (Phoenix)• Interviews took place during the overlapping periods of Italy and Bangalore

workday•Appraisal timetable for the first week of the appraisal :

Rome

timescale


Bangalore

timescale



•A centralized Appraisal Wizard database was installed in Chicago on a.

•Appraisal Team members were accessing the database from Italy,India, and the US through a virtualization solution (Citrix).

•Projects’ documentation was stored on a SharePoint.

US

Rome

ChicagoBangalore




•This solution :

-

member- Enables real time monitoring of the progress made by the appraisal

eam. s s cruc a or an c pa ng any e ay n a s r u e con ex .

- Avoid the need for merging data from the different locations

’-

- Bring easier and higher security for appraisal data

…

- Requires validation tests during the appraisal preparation and

- Is subect to erformance issues de endin on the ualit of the infrastructure




Conducting Distributed Interviews

• The script at the beginning of each interview was amended to mitigate therisk of remote interviews.

• Participants are told :- to confirm that nobody else is in their room or in a position to listen to the

ntervew

- that they should tell the ATM if they need to leave or reenter the room

during the interview

- to not take screenshot during the preliminary briefing

- that translation in another language is going to occur - can be

- To observe the phone etiquette (see next slide)

•phone





• A specific phone etiquette must be defined and communicated to allartici ants :

- Participants are called by their project names and should tell theirproject name when they need to give follow up answers. Voices are

.

- Participants should put on mute when they are not talking

-

- Introduction by each participant is an occasion to fine tune the telephone(volume, distance to microphone)

- Consider local phone etiquette rules if they exist





…phone etiquette :

•Appraisal Team Lead should ensure that all participants have a chance to

speak and that there is no domination.

•on and on and on and on and.

- This can be complicated by the fact that the speaker may turn off whensomeone e se s spea ng versus ace- o- ace w ere you can a mostalk simultaneously to each other.

•Periodic hone checks with individuals at remote locations must be done

to see if any communication issues exist : Don’t give a great 5 minutespeech to yourself !




•Many easily accessible means of communication exist in today’s office

environment. Multiple means must be used in parallel to bridge the gapsbetween distributed team members : distance, time zone, language,

cultural.•Each communication technique brings a specific contribution to making

appra sa eam mem er ee n a same room an ma e s r u eappraisal possible:

- Email- Instant Messaging systems

- Telephone, Conferencing systems

- Access to shared data re ositor (SharePoint, WAN Server,…)

- Desktop sharing software (NetMeeting, …)

- Video conference, Webcams, Tele presence

- , .

- Automated Translation tools (Babylon, Babelfish,…)




•Tools providing integration between these communication techniques is

an advanta e

•Example : Office Communicator provides integration in a same tool of Instant Messaging, Telephone, Conferencing systems, Desktop sharing

.




Validation

•It is crucial to erform ro er validation tests of these communicationtechniques before the appraisal is starting.

•Validation tests must also cover quality : response time, clarity of voiceand images.

Backup

•It is crucial to have back-up plans to keep on working in case key

communication facilities become unavailable•Using parallel and concurrent communication techniques is making fall

back scenario easier to design and implement

Security

• Ensure proper secur ty s n pace.• Many people may be curious how the appraisal is going !

• Ensure procedure are in place to enable regular backup of data and datarecovery on s an servers




Ensuring collaboration and consensus in

Team norms

•

between appraisal team members in different locations who may havenever met and have differing culture.

“ ”…forming. Where language differences exist this will be highlighted.

•Address in team norms the need to focus on appraisal activity during .

•Make daily 30mn “all hands” call to proactively indentify risks or issues andshare status

• nsure ora communca on e ween oca on s easy. no ma e sure sis at least the case with each Site Lead.

•Have a team norm on how to manage the fact that you may notunderstand the speaker due to accent (speak slowly, clearly, and withgood diction)




Ensuring collaboration and consensus in

Consensus

•Ensure each mini teammember is collocated. Mini teammembers with past experience working together is a plus.

•There is a need for a good way to ensure all appraisal team members votewhen consensus is required and other scenarios where voting isperformed.

•Instant Messaging session between the ATL and local Site Lead may be a

good way to perform vote in parallel to a conference call.•Remind the team that it is okay to cast a vote that says “I can live with it”

and make sure this team norm is applied during organization levelcharacterization.

• Ensure “original” signatures are captured for the ADS, Plan, and FinalFindings from distant ATM and sponsors. Scan of original are ok.

.




•Worked well : An automatic translation tool was efficient in conductingthe review of documents in native lan ua es Italian Check .

•Issue: There was some difficulty understanding individuals with strongaccents in their native language.

- .

- Difficulties have been strongly mitigated by the local Site Lead in

Bangalore.- Consider using IM tools during interviews and other activities to enable

ATM to raise real time questions to the person facilitating the interview.

•Issue: Some interviewees did not have stron En lish skills.

- Investigate language skills pro-actively in the preparation phase.

- Have an appraisal team member with translator skills is a must havean e sure o ac or s n o e u ge or e appra sa even .

- Add additional time for interviews when translation is needed.26Copyright ©2009 Accenture All Rights Reserved.



•Worked well : The team dynamic worked well in spite of people not

knowin each other and in s ite of cultural differences. No ma or issuesexisted during the team consensus.

•Issue : Planning back to back interviews to optimize usage of the

way to mitigate time zone differences.

- Plan SCAMPIs over a longer period (3 weeks) with fewer hours perday allocated to the appraisal to ensure interviews and consensus areperformed during reasonable periods of the day.




•Worked well : Usage of Appraisal Wizard through Citrix worked well.

•Wor e we : Havng a S te Lea wt exce ent Eng s s s n eac

location was a major advantage. Conducting a remote appraisal withouta similar profile would make it much more challenging.

- Define a Site Lead role for all remote sites where ATMs are locatedand build it into the appraisal process.

- :

•CMMI and SCAMPI

• anguage o e appra sa o ora an wr en




Staying with the method

•This is not a license for LAs to perform multiple parallel SCAMPIs

•The LA is responsible to ensure that all MDD requirements are met

•Needs to fit culturally with all involved participants (novicee econ erence users may n cu

•Need to avoid ambiguities through careful role definitions of appraisal

team members (i.e., Site Lead)

•More potential obstacles to bridging cultural differences




on erence ane ess on


a stay at home scampi appraisal

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