Competency Development, PCMM way, The Quality Buzzer to bell for late comer;

This document tells you how to implement Competency Development, P-CMM activities and key
practices, in quick and easy steps following all norms and standard of people capability maturity
model to inculcate best human resources management process in your organization. First you go
thru terminology and main components of P-CMM and then start implementing with most basic
activities those require immediate improvement and changes. As you work on these activities in
real time HR process, your in-house P-CMM team can further plan to implement other activity.
You can also reach out side P-CMM consultant to intervene your P-CMM OD.

P-CMM is extension to CMMI a software process quality standard developed by SEI for
manufacturing of software. P-CMM needs arises when SEI found people special role in the
development of technology and organization process. P-CMM is developed by keeping in mind
of software manufacture process but can be easily adapted in other area and HRM.

P-CMM Description;
In an organization P-CMM achieve its organization goals at its work force capability or capacity
to predefined maturity levels by fair means of application or doing of practices visible as
common features in most common HRM process. It takes your organization to evolutionary path
of defined, matured, disciplined and continuous improvement from ad hoc way of doing tasks.

How P-CMM way of doing things make difference than general way of performing same day to day tasks,
activity or projects.

Since P-CMM define a frame work or structure and give you a grammar to build your own
common quality assurance language to do tasks, verify and measure its performance to compare,
and to achieve further up gradation if possible, to reduce costs and increase profits by
individuals, team, group, department, company, and organization and so on. That is the main
objective of P-CMM to solve internal work force practice problems and infer & render
organization growth. The practices are implemented by activities, policies and procedures.

Definition; Maturity Levels
It has five maturity levels as known as Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimized to
be calibrated or said to be achieved after implementing common features. Where at Initial level
P-CMM does not exists or organization is performing things and tasks in random or ad hoc
methods.

Repeatable is instilling basic discipline into work force to address issue like Work Environment,
Communication, Staffing, Performance Management, Training and Compensation process. The
maturity levels made up of these processes called Key Process Areas which are puts on an
evolutionary path in any organization following and implementing P-CMM practices.

The Defined KPA is competencies are defined and work force is aligned to these. As every
maturity level defines some KPA to institutionalize or internalize in corporate culture to cultivate
quality products, services, work force talent and financial results. Defined maturity Level
constitutes Knowledge and Skills analysis, Workforce Planning, Competency Development,
Career Development, Competency-based Practices and Participatory Culture.

P-CMM says after having repeatable KPA practice in place in organization, to be Defined, to
focus on its core competencies by analyzing its business process and work and tailor them to core
competency. Then analyze skills and knowledge required to perform those business competency.
That way organization and individual unique competency are defined and aligned to each other.
Further practices are worked upon at this level to have a unique competitive and strategic work
force and process advantage.

Let's talk about Managed level, At this level organization focus on team based practice and
measure their performance to align at different level of organization. The focus is on
development of quantitative understanding of trends using statistical methods. The main KPA
are Mentoring, Team Building, Team-based Practices, Organization Competency Management,
and Organizational Performance Alignment and are interdependent to each other.

All KPA are heuristic by itself and if P-CMM process and practices carefully, systematically and
practically applied onto organization soft and hard skills i.e. functional and technical skills, every
organization entity become capable to move into next higher stage which would other wise take
ten fold of time in term of cutting cost, time and money and increase quality, intellect and profits.

P-CMM goes on to compare product improvement vs. evolution human but it is unfair and
illogical to compare human talent with materialistic entity yet measurement of competencies can
give extra added advantage in aligning and improving practice. Even though every process area
are interdependent (I think the term refer win-win situation instead of direct dependent) and
every level is reached to stair the KPA since you may find a sense of dependence among maturity
levels. Yet any organization can choose to implement a KPA jumping level up or down as
required.

The Optimizing level KPA are Personal Competency Development, Coaching and Continuous
Workforce Innovation. All process area focus on to upward improvement path of personal
competencies and work force practices innovation.

P-CMM evolutionary maturity levels develop organization talent by using key practices in these
process areas. Every key practice is a policy, procedure or an activity that implement the process
or KPA.

Till now you had an idea of maturity levels and introduction of Key Process Area and its
Practices. Now Ill refer some more PCMM infrastructure component before moving ahead to
further example of application of KPA from HR perspective. Any time you can refer to great
understanding of P-CMM thru manual available at SEI site.

PCMM Infrastructure Component;

Maturity Levels
These are top level component and represents evolutionary plateau or target evolving platform
as described above.

KPA
Every ML has some key process areas as described above. Every process is implemented using
key practices to reach the ML plateau. Every KPA is defined after components.

Goals
These represents the state achieved after implementing the key practices of that area. By defining
goal it ensures that objective of KPA for that levels do not deviate from its intent.




Common Features
Every KPA has following common features. Applying of P-CMM mainly constitutes
implementation of these features using key practices. All key practices are organized into the
category of common features. The main features are:

Commitment to Perform
Actions organization must take to make environment for implementing key practices. This
involves establishing policies and management sponsorships.

Ability to Perform
Organization should have resources, organization structures and training capacity to be able to
implement practices effectively.

Activities Performed
Actual roles and responsibilities performed by individuals which form the functions of key
process area. It includes planning for tasks, doing, tracking and checking for corrective action.

Measurement and Analysis
It measure the key practices and analyze the measurements i.e. activities performed effectiveness
in implementation.

Verifying Implementation
It verify the key practice as a whole or activities performed are accordance with the policy.

Key Practices
Every KPA is described in terms of key practices. To reach goals and ML evolution plateau, key
practices activities need to be performed. Most often single sentence describes key practice with
detailed description. It tells `What` is to be done. For example, HR key practices are:

Salary slip is given on salary day.
This practice involves may some activities like calculation, generation, printing and distribution
electronically.

Determine requirements of personal or human resources with different skills.
Key Practice identifies the technical human resources available on different technical skills to
deploy on work and projects.

Develop a constructive procedure for negative feedback mechanism in up or down order.

As key practices are at the heart of PCMM, I will elaborate these examples on PCMM model.
Similar way right from the day you can start on designing urgent and important key practices
and elaborate on its features.

Themes
I mentioned earlier though maturity levels can be achieved in random order but there are,
however, relationships between the key process areas that stretch across maturity levels. These
relationships establish four themes that run through the P-CMM:

Developing capabilities
Building teams and culture
Motivating and managing performance
Shaping the workforce

The above four theme runs across KPA on different maturity levels. See Fig 2.3 in PCMM manual
and details of them.

These are main components which help you define and architecting PCMM key practices in you
organization.

KPA Maturity Level wise;
All key process area categorized organization tasks normally spread over various departments
into process and give a view to identifying capabilities needed to improve these processes and
take them to next level of maturity.

Initial
No explicit key process area

Repeat
Work environment
This KPA allows a distraction and impediment free appropriate work environment that compiles
with laws and regulations. All key practices falling under this category should be implemented in
this area.

Communication
It establishes mechanisms to support effective communication and enabling workforce skills to
share information and ensuring activities co-ordination and resolve problems.

Staffing
It focuses on establishing formal practices of recruitment, selection and assimilation of talent.
Recruitment involves identifying knowledge and skills requirement for open positions,
motivation of individuals to seek qualified prospective candidates, announcing the available
positions to different sources and review the effectiveness of recruitment process. In Selection list
qualified candidates, define selection strategy, thoroughly evaluating qualified candidate to sort
most ones. In Transition or assimilation orient selected ones to organization and designating to
positions.

Performance management
It is to establish practices objective criteria against which all individual performance is measured
and performance feed back is provided to further on improvement. It also involves removing
performance bottlenecks, identifying development needs and rewarding super performers.

Training
Development of key practices providing required skills training to all individuals on time to do
their assignments.

Compensation
Develop a compensation strategy of remuneration and benefits for individuals based upon their
contribution, performance and value.

Defined
Knowledge and skills analysis
Competency development team identifies the knowledge & skills required to do core business
processes so that they may be developed and used as a basis for work force practices. While
knowledge and skills interpret business process maintain competence

Work force planning
Develop an over all strategy plan to set objective for competency development. A near-term
guide is also developed for workforce activities.


Competency development
It establishes practices to constantly enhance the capabilities of workforce to perform their
assigned task and responsibilities. Previous two KPA form the foundation for this area and it
develop training programs and other development practices in core competencies.

Career development
It provides motivation, new skill developments, discusses career options and develop personal
development plan of individuals focusing their career objectives.

Competency-based practices
It ensures all work force KPA practices are based in against on developing knowledge and skills
of the workforce. Competency-based practices involves every activity is done against some basis
of activities.

Participatory culture
This KPA matures this and previous level. It ensures a flow of information the knowledge of
individuals within organization for decision making process and to gain their support for
commitments. Participatory culture perpetuates high-performance teams and matures
communication and increase commitment if effectively undertaken.

Managed

Mentoring
The objective is to make use of available experience to assist in developing knowledge and skills,
improving performance, handling difficult situations, making career decisions. It establish
practices of setting mentoring objectives, designing mentoring activities, selecting and training
mentors, assigning mentors to individuals, establishing mentoring relationships and evaluate the
whole process effectiveness.

Team Building
It objective is to build teams of integration of diverse knowledge and skills to perform business
functions to capitalize on opportunities. The whole process involves creating required skills
teams, setting performance criteria, tailoring standard process use by team, review team
performance.

Team-based practices
In team-based practices workforce practices support development, motivation and functioning of
teams. It involves support team functions, setting performance criteria, review it performance,
involve team members in team functions, and reflecting team criteria in individuals
compensations decisions.

Organization competency management
It involves setting measurable goals for growth in organization core competencies, defining and
collecting relevant data, analyzing the impact of competency development activities against
goals, applying the review to further development competency activities. It is designed to
increase capability of the organization in its core competencies and to determine effectiveness of
it competency development activities in achieving specific competency growth goals.




Organizational performance alignment
It area is designed to enhance alignment of performance results at individual and group levels
with the appropriate goals and to quantitatively assess the effectiveness of workforce practices on
achieving alignment. A process is set up to perform the area activities.

Optimizing
Personal competency development
It sets foundation for professional self development. This program involves developing goals and
plans for personal work activities, establishing and using defined personal processes, measuring
and analyzing the effectiveness of these personal processes, and implementing improvements to
them.

Coaching
Coaching involves selecting appropriate coaches, analyzing data on personal or team
performance, providing guidance on methods for improving performance, and evaluating
progress toward goals for improving performance.

Continuous work force innovation
It involves establishing a mechanism for proposing improvements in workforce activities,
identifying needs for new practices and technologies, surveying and evaluating innovative
practices and technologies, conducting exploratory trials of new practices and technologies, and
implementing the most beneficial ones across the organization.

Examples of elaboration of key features of Key Practices

Glossary