Generic Goal 3

Generic Goal 3 is Institutionalise a Defined Process. What, precisely is a defined process?

A defined process is a managed process that is tailored from the organisation’s set of standard processes according to the organisation’s tailoring guidelines.

It has maintained process descriptions and contributes work products, measures and other process improvement information to the organisational process assets.

A critical distinction between a managed process and a defined process is the scope of application of the process descriptions, standards, and procedures.

For a managed process – descriptions, standards, and procedures are applicable to a particular project, group, or organisational function. As a result, the managed processes of two projects in one organisation may be different.

A defined process is standardised as much as possible across the organisation and, only when required, adapted for a specific project or organisational function based on tailoring guidelines.

Generic Goal 3 Generic Practices

The Generic Goal 3 has two Generic Practices attached. These are ensuring that there are defined processes for testing that are institutionalised across the organisational unit and that all parties are adhering to them.

This is different to Level 2 where all projects may be doing the same thing but in different ways. This would allow for achieving Level 2 maturity but, unless it is standardised and common across all projects, would fail at Level 3.

• GP 3.1 Establish a defined process
  • Establish and maintain description of the process that is tailored from standard processes.
  • Process Areas have standard processes and associated tailoring guidelines
  • Is there a standard for all organisational unit elements?
    
• GP 3.2 Collect improvement information
  • Collect information and artefacts from planning and running the process to help improve assets
  • The information is stored so others have access to it when they need to follow the process
  • Is the organisational unit collecting data and artefacts that are being, or will be, used to identify process improvement opportunities?

This Generic Goal also looks to ensure that data is identified, collected and analysed across the organisational unit to monitor efficiency, effectiveness and fitness for purpose of the test processes, procedures, tools, templates and other artefacts.