What do you do when you are booked on J-class and find out that one of your
junior colleagues, who is entitled to Y-class, is also on the same flight? Well,
if you have some time before you board the aircraft, you downgrade your booking.
However, if you have already boarded the aircraft, the best option is to request
the cabin-crew for a seat next to your colleague…
If you think this is some fluff being quoted from the human rights blue book,
hold on... this is a real example from an exhaustive document on do’s and dont’s
from TechSpan, the youngest company to achieve level 3 of the people capability
maturity model (PCMM).
And in case you got it wrong, PCMM does not make it mandatory for a company
to actually include such instructions in its employee handbook. Rather, it
attempts to make an organization conscious enough to develop best practices for
nurturing, developing and managing its workforce. It’s an evolutionary roadmap
for implementing the vital practices from one or more domains of organizational
process. It contains the essential elements of effective processes for one or
more disciplines and describes an evolutionary improvement path from an ad hoc,
immature process to a disciplined, mature process with improved quality and
effectiveness.
Also, since an organization cannot implement all of the best workforce
practices in a day, PCMM introduces them in stages.
Each progressive level of the PCMM produces a unique transformation in the
organization’s culture by equipping it with more powerful practices for
attracting, developing, organizing, motivating, and retaining its workforce.
Thus, the PCMM establishes an integrated system of workforce practices that
matures through increasing alignment with the organization’s business
objectives, performance, and changing needs.
Why PCMM?
Forty years ago, people feared that technology would reduce the need for
educated workers, leaving large segments of the population unemployed. What
actually happened was just the opposite. In fact, the demand for educated
workers today exceeds the supply. In the knowledge economy, companies are
competing in two markets–one for its products and services and the other for
the essential talent to develop and deliver them.
Recruiting and retention are now as important as production and distribution
in the corporate business strategies of knowledge-intensive companies. Although
most companies understand the importance of attracting and retaining talent,
many lack a coherent approach to achieving their talent goals. Further, most
lack the vision to integrate a system of practices to achieve their workforce
objectives. This is where PCMM tells you exactly what the Fortune 500 companies
have been doing world over to tackle the situation.
The Dos |
The |
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Detailed planning is critical and the plans must include even the minutest of details about each and every activity and how it is to be performed |
Do not succumb to the ‘level fever’ — wherein the desire to achieve a certain maturity level in P-CMM becomes more important than achieving the business benefits attained through improved practices |
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Ensure that the plans have realistic deadlines and are acceptable to all the members involved in the activities contained in the plans |
Do not try to skip maturity levels — you cannot implement practices at higher levels of maturity without first building the infrastructure of practices provided by lower maturity levels of the model |
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Continuously make efforts to increase awareness among staff through more involvement in processes and policies and a good communication plan |
Project constraints, disturbances and daily routine tasks could severely hamper the progress of such initiatives |
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Keep the people processes as simple as possible |
Avoid too many process changes or else trend analysis will be a problem |
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Concentrate on the measurements and trends for process improvements |
Never ignore suggestions and recommendations of the task force members |
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Measure the progress regularly. It helps in fine tuning the process |
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Ensure the enthusiasm and commitment of each and every member of the assessment team |
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A trremendous sense of timeliness and punctuality is necessary with respect to the plans |
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Members of the assessment team should have good understanding of the P-CMM model in order to ensure that the process framework remains relevant to the organization’s people and business practices |
The primary objective of PCMM is to improve the capability of the workforce,
which can be defined as the level of knowledge, skills, and process abilities
available for performing an organization’s business activities. Workforce
capability indicates an organization’s readiness for performing its critical
business activities and the likely results from performing these business
activities. It also means working towards the potential for benefiting from
investments in process improvement or advanced technology.
No wonder then, since its release in 1995, it has successfully guided
workforce improvement programs in companies such as Boeing, Ericsson and
Lockheed Martin. Interestingly, while Wipro is the first company to achieve the
highest level (PCMM 5) globally, TechSpan India is the youngest company to touch
level 3.
The RoI |
A positive balance between high performance workforce practices and the organization’s financial performance |
Analysis of several different samples throughout the 1990s show strong support for a very positive relationship between high performance workforce practices and organization’s financial performance. The SEI-CMU document on P-CMM independent A similar study by Welbourne and Andrews When considering employee compensation |
Top of the world
Wipro’s first brush with the process was in as early as 1995. According to
company V-P (HR) Pratik Kumar, it was decided to deploy this model due to Wipro’s
inherent focus on processes to deliver high quality services and products and
develop exceptional talent. "The depth and width of PCMM to make a robust
and sustained people process structure motivated us to go for it," he
added. However, the initiation took some time. Between 1996 and 1997, it was a
phase of selling the concept internally–the top management and employees being
taken through the awareness campaign and PCMM related communications. The entire
organization was addressed and key people from across different levels and
departments were involved at various stages. Champions were developed at all
levels and functions–from the CEO of the company to the talent engagement and
developmental head, followed by business heads, technical managers and people
from delivery, quality and marketing functions. And finally, when the company
formally launched its PCMM initiative there were 100 champions to start this
journey.
The next big leap towards achieving PCMM was to conduct a gap analysis to
understand the missing links between what Wipro was practicing and what the
model prescribed. Design and implementation of the processes that could bridge
the gap followed. Documentation of the processes was another activity that was
initiated as a parallel activity. "We looked at the documentation from two
perspectives. One, it provides the necessary backbone support and two, it also
identifies possible gaps in an existing process," Kumar explained. With
this in mind, the 100-odd champions set out to conduct the huge task of
documentation. There was more to come. There was a need to institutionalize the
processes and here, the strong belief in the four threads of developing
competency, managing and motivating performance, shaping workforce and building
team culture came handy. Next on the block was the need for communication within
the organization on the processes, their impact, usage and modes of feedback.
Finally, measurement factors through quantification on status and value of
processes implemented were put in place. Spot checks were conducted to validate
the status and health of processes and to ensure that they are being
implemented. A detailed pre-assessment on the PCMM framework across organization
preceded the final assessment as prescribed by the Software Engineering
Institute. The final assessment was done by none other than the principal
architect of the model–Dr Bill Curtis.
What next?
While Wipro’s entire journey to PCMM level 5 was completed in 2001, the
model itself advocates continuous improvement. So what’s the next step for the
company which has already achieved the top level? "We will continue to work
on emerging HR challenges and use the PCMM framework to sustain the robustness
of our processes," says Kumar. Meanwhile, Wipro is also providing
consultation to some of its overseas clients in assessing the maturity of their
people processes, developing a roadmap for improvement and facilitating their
journey.
Age no bar
"Right from day one of our PCMM journey, we knew that the final
assessment of the model framework would be a by-product of our initiative to
institutionalize processes that impact people and their productivity in TechSpan,"
says Arjun Malhotra, chairman and CEO, TechSpan. He proudly adds, "Being
assessed at P-CMM level 3 means we are in exclusive and distinguished company of
high maturity organizations, and we have earned the distinction of being the
world’s youngest and only e-business centric company achieve this."
According to TechSpan’s senior manager for people development, Monica
Mudgal, the journey, which was appropriately termed the ‘people
process improvement’ (PPI) initiative, was aimed at achieving three
specific objectives. First, to increase the involvement of employees in creating
and improving people practices. Second, to standardize people processes with the
help of the SEI People framework and third, to increase efficiency and
scalability of people processes and overall software development and delivery
operations.
PCMM Pre requisites |
Management commitment The top management should agree to the concept and understand the importance of people processes and the need to invest time and resources--financial and people--for the same. |
Process orientation There should be an inherent desire to change and continuously improve. Perpetual improvement of workforce practices ensures organizational success. |
Participatory culture The need to involve people in defining and then continuously and consistently improving organizational and people practices and processes. |
External resource It is also important to have committed and qualified people to hand hold the organization during the entire exercise. This is where consultants and lead assessors really help. |
Internal resources The internal resource should be sensitized and ideally one person from the people development team should be allocated for every 20 employees. |
So how did they do it? The first phase (1999-2000), Mudgal explains, was all
about getting management commitment to pursue the ‘people first’ philosophy
and recognition of the fact that people form the key to sustained business
success. After a unanimous buy in the PCMM model and analysis of where the
company stood, it was decided that level-3 was a realistic target to achieve.
Adds Mudgal, "The higher levels were too ambitious for TechSpan at that
stage."
April 2000 saw the company actually taking the plunge after its key members
attended a workshop organized by QAI. Soon Mudgal and her team were mapping all
the people policies and processes to understand the missing areas. Task forces
from amongst the employees were formed for each key process area (KPA). Luckily
for TechSpan, the gap analysis showed that the company already had 80% of
systems in place for level 3. The need was now to create a plan for covering the
remaining 20% and this became the key result area for each KPA.
The next phase involved the formal launch of PCMM. Education sessions with
the staff were held on the various PCMM KPAs and the people processes within the
company and 13 internal assessment team members were selected. All this, while
the task forces were fine tuning processes within their KPAs. However, the
company decided to postpone the final assessment date from May 2001 to December
in order to buy some more time for implementation of suggested improvements in
processes. This was also aimed to ensure effectiveness of newer initiatives and
to increase awareness among staff through more involvement. The time was also
well spent with the ATMs undergoing training on assessment techniques, while a
two-days spot-check or mini-pre-assessment was also carried out during the
period. The final assessment included interviews with process owners, senior
managers and staff, collation of data from the interview sessions, document
reviews, survey findings and the conclusive rating.
The road ahead
"The certification has been an important milestone that has left its
mark on all those involved in this journey at TechSpan. The certification has
helped TechSpan in addressing and tackling important issues like career
development, performance management, competency development, training and
organizational competency," says Bonnie Singh, executive director, TechSpan
India and sponsor for it’s P-CMM initiative. According to him, the next step
for the PPI team is to harness the learnings from the assessment process
to further enhance the robustness of the existing people processes at level
3 maturity in the next six months. And by August 2003, TechSpan is aiming for
the PCMM 4.
While the Indian software industry has been quick in adopting the software
CMM developed by Software Engineering Institute (SEI), and there are already two
dozen IT companies assessed at level 5, experts suggest that PCMM is slated to
be the next big thing in the software industry. And as Mudgal says,
"Process improvement is important but the key to success is the capability
of the people-ware. In fact, the P-CMM model works as a supporting process
framework to facilitate better software processes."
SHUBHENDU PARTH in New Delhi with
inputs from Ritu Malhotra
"Techspan is now far more confident of targeting the next level of
people tests"
Bonnie Singh, executive director, TechSpan India, and sponsor for it’s PCMM
initiative
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When did TechSpan
start working on the PCMM initiative?
Even though we achieved the PCMM level 3 recently, the ground rules
for people processes were laid out in early 1999, the day TechSpan
was set up. We wanted to build an institution where employees share
the same values as founders and hence it was important to have
mature processes that would help translate values down to every
single employee. During the initial days, a lot of time was spent on
deciding small but significant things like the organization’s
culture, values and etiquette. This was the beginningof our people
processes program. However, let me clarify that our people process
initiative was not aimed at achieving the PCMM certification.
Instead, the certification is the byproduct of our initiatives.
 So
what was the trigger for the certification? Was it the desire to
showcase what you were already practicing?
Not really. By October 2000, the slowdown had hit the Indian
economy. But then, customers had also started demanding consistent
quality of deliverables in the processes. This is when the idea for
testing maturity through an external audit started gaining
importance within the company. However, we decided to go in for PCMM
rather than the software model because we felt that our people
processes were more matured. Also, we chose PCMM for its business
implications like stability, retention, knowledge retention, re—skilling,
retooling, better recruitment, quality of people and ability to
resource.
 How
difficult was the task?
After a unanimous decision to go in for PCMM certification, and
doing an analysis of where we stood, we set level-3 as a realistic
target to achieve. However, when I was given January 2002 as the
date for final assessment, my initial reaction was of nervousness.
Fortunately, we had most of the processes already in place for level
3 and hence the next step was to create a plan and a gap analysis to
identify how we would cover the rest. Also, we decided to treat the
level 3 assessment as a separate project, and laid down a detailed
plan to achieve the same. We also included pre-assessment as a part
of our plan to improve as we went along. In the long 18-month
project, education emerged as a big focus area. We also realized
that it was important to constantly educate people and make them
aware of the changes as we went along
 What
has been the learning from this initiative?
The certification has been an important milestone in TechSpan’s
journey and has helped us in addressing and tackling important
issues like career development, performance management, competency
development, training and organizational competency. The
transformation at the organizational level has been significant and
perceptible. The achievement reflects in our consistent software
delivery to customers. One of the biggest achievements at the
company level has been the value that this certification has brought
to TechSpan. Today, people tell me that this has been a truly
enriching journey that has bought TechSpanians closer. The process
has also helped us institutionalize our people process improvement
program and the certification has ensured that we will constantly
innovate and look at the new processes to sustain the current level
and target the next levels–P-CMM 4 and 5.
On the
personal front, a big achievement for me was my evolution from being
sales oriented and transactional focussed to becoming the ‘process
man’ at TechSpan.
Shubhendu
Parth