Achieving Software’s Highest Quality Rating

Lead Engineer Shannon Campbell is an engaging game show host, as she gets ready for the next round of Booz Allen Hamilton’s own "Jeopardy!"-style quiz show. The goal? To help teams get comfortable with statistics and process improvement techniques.

In July 2015, Booz Allen had been awarded a $200 million contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). And the agency required that the firm’s Systems Delivery Execution organization achieve a higher “maturity level” (ML) rating for software development and quality management from the Capability Maturity Model Integration Institute (CMMI) within a year—or forfeit a portion of the contract.

The process toward higher maturity typically takes 2 years. But because of the CMS contract, we had to get there in half the time.

“Change doesn’t come easily. Just telling someone to do something doesn’t work,” says Shannon, a process improvement expert. “You have to make it fun and interesting, too. Who doesn’t love a little friendly competition?”

For more than 20 years, we’ve used CMMI models and we’ve operated consistently at ML 3 since 2005. We could point to our solid foundation—an industry-leading team of data scientists, a robust modeling and simulation capability, and a proven software delivery track record.

But to become a truly data-driven organization meant not just using advanced statistical processes in ongoing projects. It also means proving it—showing and telling how we use data to gauge performance and predict results.

“To be certified at maturity level 4 or 5, we had to start being proactive, instead of reactive, with our data,” says Principal Kevin Schaaff, team lead and the firm’s lead CMMI high maturity appraiser. “It’s a real culture shift for any organization, and ours was no exception.”

Kevin and his team moved into overdrive. They identified existing client projects that Booz Allen could move to high maturity. Each project brought a unique element to the table:

• For an Internal Revenue Service client, we had over 10 years of data following a consistent repeatable process.
• At the Department of Veterans Affairs, and in support of the Marine Corps, our software development teams used Agile methods, with rapid cycle times to generate data very quickly.
• And at CMS, our people were working on a systems integration project that collects thousands of data points every day.

Together, the projects highlighted the breadth of our software engineering, analytical, and quantitative management expertise.

“We set the bar very high,” says Lead Technologist Ryan Bays, a process improvement expert. “We knew it was going to be hard. We had to be brutally honest and expose our software development weaknesses in front of everybody. That was the only way to reach our high maturity goal.”