Summary

Establish and maintain guidelines to determine which issues are subject to a formal evaluation process.

Description

Not every decision is significant enough to require a formal evaluation process. The choice between the trivial and the truly important is unclear without explicit guidance. Whether a decision is significant or not is dependent on the work and circumstances and is determined by established guidelines.

 

Typical guidelines for determining when to require a formal evaluation process include the following:
  • A decision is directly related to issues that are medium-to-high-impact risk.
  • A decision is related to changing work products under configuration management.
  • A decision would cause schedule delays over a certain percentage or amount of time.
  • A decision affects the ability of the work group to achieve its objectives.
  • The costs of the formal evaluation process are reasonable when compared to the decision’s impact.
  • A legal obligation exists during a solicitation.
  • When competing quality attribute requirements would result in significantly different solutions for the service system


Refer to the Risk Management (RSKM) (CMMI-SVC) process area for more information about evaluating, categorizing, and prioritizing risks.


 

Examples of activities for which you may use a formal evaluation process include the following:
  • Selecting elements to include in standard service descriptions
  • Selecting, terminating, or renewing suppliers
  • Selecting training for work group members
  • Selecting an approach for ongoing support (e.g., disaster recovery, service levels)


Example Work Products



  1. Guidelines for when to apply a formal evaluation process


Subpractices



1. Establish guidelines for when to use a formal evaluation process.



2. Incorporate the use of guidelines into the defined process as appropriate.

Refer to the Integrated Work Management (IWM) (CMMI-SVC) process area for more information about establishing the defined process for the work.