Practical Insight into Cmmi (Artech House Computing Library)

Rating:
Summary: Pragmatic and filled with ideas
Review: As in his previous book, 'Action Focused Assessment for Software Process Improvement' (ISBN 1580532861) Kasse does deep into issues and important factors without losing sight of the big picture. His approach to the CMMI is straightforward, but he also provides context and background, and is especially cogent in explaining the differences between the older CMM variants and the integrated model. I particularly liked the way he explains staged and continuous representation approaches, and how he leads you through choosing between the two if implementing CMMI is a goal.

The heart of this book, though, is the practical benefits from the CMMI and how to achieve them. He is heavily focused on how the CMMI relates to system engineering and project-based organizations, and goes into detail about integrated teaming, project and product management. In addition, there is a wealth of material on process improvement, quality and related topics such as requirements management. Mr. Kasse's previous books and published works are heavily slanted towards those topics, so there should be no surprise about the amount of emphasis he given them in this book. Of course, the emphasis is warranted because process improvement and quality are two key goals of CMMI, as is integrated teamwork.

With a plethora of books about CMMI this one stands out because of the straightforward way Kasse describes the why's and how's, and the clarity with which he discusses implementation (and its barriers). There is no hype or hyperbole, unrealistic promises or contrived benefits - just plain talk that will give you a solid understanding of the CMMI and what it takes to implement it.

Rating:
Summary: Pragmatic and filled with ideas
Review: As in his previous book, 'Action Focused Assessment for Software Process Improvement' (ISBN 1580532861) Kasse does deep into issues and important factors without losing sight of the big picture. His approach to the CMMI is straightforward, but he also provides context and background, and is especially cogent in explaining the differences between the older CMM variants and the integrated model. I particularly liked the way he explains staged and continuous representation approaches, and how he leads you through choosing between the two if implementing CMMI is a goal.

The heart of this book, though, is the practical benefits from the CMMI and how to achieve them. He is heavily focused on how the CMMI relates to system engineering and project-based organizations, and goes into detail about integrated teaming, project and product management. In addition, there is a wealth of material on process improvement, quality and related topics such as requirements management. Mr. Kasse's previous books and published works are heavily slanted towards those topics, so there should be no surprise about the amount of emphasis he given them in this book. Of course, the emphasis is warranted because process improvement and quality are two key goals of CMMI, as is integrated teamwork.

With a plethora of books about CMMI this one stands out because of the straightforward way Kasse describes the why's and how's, and the clarity with which he discusses implementation (and its barriers). There is no hype or hyperbole, unrealistic promises or contrived benefits - just plain talk that will give you a solid understanding of the CMMI and what it takes to implement it.

Rating:
Summary: Mostly copied from the CMMI
Review: I'm working in the quality group of a small company to introduce CMMI and to get assessed.

We were very happy when we saw the title "practical insight" and bought the book.
But we were all very disspointed. Lots of chapters are directly copied, or slightly changed from the CMMI Model, with no more explanation. There is no benefit!
We did not find any practical insight in this book.

As we are developing our processes we always have the CMMI book open and read the practices. If it happens that we want more information we sometimes check the book from tim, but in most cases the content is exactly the same.

It's really not worth the price!