Systematic process improvement using ISO 9001:2000 and CMMI

8 Introduction
are different, but they still have a lot in common. It is this commonality that
we are going to explore in this book. Both standards have large followings
in the United States and internationally. They are based on predecessor
standards created in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Both standards are often
required by contracts. Customer representatives (or third-party organizations
that are specifically chartered for appraising standard implementation) may
examine and evaluate their implementation.
When confronted with requirements for following multiple standards,
most organizations will implement one standard, perform an appraisal to
confirm that the standard was satisfactorily followed, and then address the
next standard.
Some organizations, in their quest for the shortest possible time to achieve
ISO registration or a CMM ® maturity level, will opt for the cheapest and
the least complicated approach. They intend to revisit their processes after
achieving registration or process maturity level, but in practice this is seldom
done.
By analyzing the requirements of ISO 9001:2000 and the CMMI ® ,we
see that they have many commonalties that can be exploited. If we carry
this concept further, by adding more and more details, we realize that we
have to account for differences between the maturity of organizations that
plan to implement those standards, their commitment to those standards, and
their willingness to accept necessary organizational changes. We analyzed
several potential approaches and selected one that enables efficient process
improvement implementation and capitalizes on the synergy between the
standards.
What unifies those two frameworks When analyzing the principles on
which they were built, we noticed that they have more similarities than
differences. We were able to use the strengths of one standard to counter
the weaknesses of the other, thus further unifying the process improvement
approach. For example, both documents are based on the following:
• Process approach;
• Full life cycle;
• Integration of management and production processes;
• Systematic planning;
• Extensive process and product measurements;
• Explicit requirement for the resources needed to implement the
processes;