What is NEXT - POST PEOPLE CMM

Post People CMM few top of mind thoughts.

·         People CMM  is one the great tool that was introduced in the year 1998 by Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, CMU

However in these last 16 years, many organizations have either attempted implementing or have formally undertaken  journey to attain particular maturity levels and some of them have successfully achieved their desired maturity levels.   It is a significant achievement.   Great masterpiece work designed to achieve business results.

Most of the organizations have witnessed immense business results and have shown greater enthusiasm and vigor in implementing this framework successfully.    Sustaining this enthusiasm and vigor is the key and some are satisfied with what they have achieved and most of them should realize, it is not the end, it is just the beginning of great expectation they have set for themself.  

The most pertinent question is what is post People CMM? .  Some say, we should benchmark with other People CMM organizations and improve our current practices,  some want to sustain with audit rigor and ensure the true benefits are capitalized over sustained efforts of implementation.

As  time passes, due to many organizational changes, including people,  the same enthusiasm and vigor fades away.   Suddenly management starts questioning us  what is the true benefit we derived out of People CMM? then people start searching for answers.    It is indeed a matter of pride and responsibility when you call yourself Level 5.   Let us think through what are few things to be done post People CMM... 

Some benefits People witnessed/reported:

Process Benefit
   -Indent-to-join cycle time drop from   60 to 40 days (WIPRO)
   -33% drop in attrition (Novo Nordisk)
   -“Structured knowledge Management” (Covansys)
   -“Improved talent attraction” (Siemens)

- Employee Benefit
  - 60% increase in ESAT( Boeing BRS)
  - 45% in people exceeding  performance expectations due to
    competency-based recruitment (Covansys)
  - “Higher employee morale” (CSC, WIPRO)
  -  Created Sense of real empowerment (Club Mahindra)

- Service/Delivery Excellence

 - Drop in Rework due to higher competency(21% co-relation)Infosys
  -With 110% increase in training time,  improvement in review         efficiency  by  100%  and  drop in   rework by   45% (TCS)

- Business Impact
  - 12% increase in guest  feedback scores (Club Mahindra)
  - “Enabled scalability” (Techspan)
  -  Increased competitive edge (CSC)

People CMM – Challenges (commonly observed)- Post achieving. 

• Increased process over-load maintenance by HR.
• Obtaining continued buy in to sustain People CMM maturity by Line Managers, Investment of time seems tough. 
• Top management finds it as an effective tool to show case value to future customers and other stake holders, however, needs more tangible results on HR's contributions to business.
• Mixed results of increased maturity vs. Adhoc practices prevailing within organization.
• The maturity levels slip from level 5 to level 3 over a period of time and process adherence appears more mechanical rather than truly leveraging the potential benefit.

What is the missing link?

• Most of the organizations find the overall initiative too cumbersome as they start moving towards higher maturity and looses grip in fully capitalizing the true potential, and ends up merely to achieve assessment results
• Peer pressure is immense and PCMM becomes hygiene rather than truly capitalizing
• very few organizations are able to demonstrate
• Befits to Individual productivity improvement
• Team benefiting and truly optimizing and learning from other teams becoming high performing teams.
• How to create an environment where people excel and learn from each other.  Did we sufficiently achieve this?   May times answers are mixed and needs to really examine, what we could have done better. 

What needs to be done?

·         People CMM puts the focus on four key aspects.

             How to achieve individual capability,

             Team capability levels

             How to create high performing atmosphere.

             How to leverage this to realize business benefit    

Since the People CMM has 499 practices and while implementing these practices, organization gradually looses focuses on how it helped in terms of business.  Did we sufficiently demonstrate true benefit to the business.  Satisfying and sustaining these practices takes more momentum and overall focus is diluted.

Hence it is time to reflect a bit more and bring the focus back.  My personal view is that it  is a very good beginning we have made, however it is important to make it more powerful.    The power comes from

• Narrowing down practices from 499 to 20 manageable practices against each thread, to achieve the business objectives.  Overall it comes to around 80-100 manageable practices
• Each of these practices have to be made more robust and deeper and evaluated against the true business benefit it is truly demonstrating.
• Some of the focus should definitely lie on
• Increasing Individual productivity levels 
• Team excellence and creation of high performing teams
• How HR practices and interventions can be limited to creating high performance work culture.
• How measurements system can demonstrate ROI and truly value to business goals of any organization.

This should help organizations to truly leverage these business benefits to influence internal and external stake holders.

IN SHORT NARROW DOWN PEOPLE CMM FROM 499 TO MANAGEABLE 20-30 POWERFUL PRACTICES for each threads.  Which strives to achieve Individual productivity levels, High performing teams, High performance work culture and Measurements to demonstrate Strong ROI to your business.     This would mean you will approximately have around 80-100 practices or even lesser.    Let us make it more customized to suit our Business requirement and truly show case HR's value to business.