Alright already! So whats the reality-based approach about?!
The reality-based approach starts with a premise that a successful development organization is already doing what it needs to be doing to be successful, and, that process improvement activities can be designed into the organization’s existing routines. Note the use of “designed into”. This is crucial. This means that for reality-based process improvement (reality-based CMMI implementation), the development activities must be known, they must be definable, and, they must be at work for the organization. Then, activities that achieve the goals of CMMI can be designed into those pre-existing activities. This whole business of designing process improvement activities into product/project activities obviates a simple but powerful fact: effective process improvement (CMMI included) requires processes to be engineered. Sadly, a recent Google search on “process engineering” turned up few instances where the search term was associated with software processes, and most of those positive hits wer
