Systematic process improvement using ISO 9001:2000 and CMMI

2.3 Typical process improvement approaches 15
tive even harder to implement. These additional issues make process
improvement difficult:
• Lack of clearly stated business goals and objectives;
• Lack of management support;
• Lack of staff or budget;
• Everyday pressures to deliver products under development;
• Resistance to change;
• Desire to maintain the status quo;
• Fear of losing influence.
Despite these difficulties, once changes have been successfully implemented,
stakeholders 1 usually refuse to return to the status quo. As an
organization matures, change becomes a natural and desirable practice.
To address improvement obstacles, an organization needs to develop
an improvement approach and a plan for systematically and incrementally
introducing changes and new process technology.
First, an organization needs to define its process improvement goals,
which are typically subsets of its business goals. Second, a problem-solving
process and a framework to guide process improvement must be selected.
Finally, resources must be allocated to execute and monitor the plan.
The problem-solving process, or approach, outlines the steps needed to
systematically and incrementally introduce improvements and measure their
effectiveness. The improvement framework is necessary to establish a model
that will guide improvements and a means for measuring progress.
2.3 Typical process improvement approaches
Some process improvement approaches are generic problem-solving
methods. Others, such as ISO 9004:2000 or Part 7 of ISO TR 15504, have
been developed in conjunction with a specific standard or framework and
later generalized in, for example, the IDEAL SM model. Some approaches are
based on Shewhart’s PDCA cycle, while others have their roots in a specific
1. Stakeholders are defined as groups or individuals that are affected by or are in some way accountable for the
outcome of an undertaking (CMMI ® ).