The term “improvement,” as used in this process area, refers to all ideas (proven and unproven) that would change the processes and technologies to better meet the quality and process-performance objectives.
Quality and process-performance objectives might include:
Achievement of these objectives depends on the successful establishment of an infrastructure that enables and encourages all people in the organization to propose potential improvements to the processes and technologies. Achievement of these objectives also depends on being able to effectively evaluate and deploy proposed improvements to the processes and technologies. All members of the organization can participate in the organization's process- and technology-improvement activities. Their proposals are systematically gathered and addressed.
Pilots are conducted to evaluate significant changes involving untried, high-risk, or innovative improvements before they are broadly deployed.
Process and technology improvements that will be deployed across the organization are selected from process- and technology-improvement proposals based on criteria:
The expected benefits added by the process and technology improvements are weighed against the cost and impact to the organization. Change and stability must be balanced carefully. Change that is too great or too rapid can overwhelm the organization, destroying its investment in organizational learning represented by organizational process assets. Rigid stability can result in stagnation, allowing the changing business environment.
Improvements are deployed, as appropriate, to new and ongoing projects.
In this process area, the term “process and technology improvements” refers to incremental and innovative improvements to processes and also to process or product technologies.
The informative material in this process area is written with the assumption that the specific practices are applied to a quantitatively managed process. The specific practices of this process area may be applicable, but with reduced value, if the assumption is not met.
The specific practices in this process area complement and extend those found in the Organizational Process Focus process area. The focus of this process area is process improvement that is based on a quantitative knowledge of the set of standard processes and technologies and their expected quality and performance in predictable situations. In the Organizational Process Focus process area, no assumptions are made about the quantitative basis of improvement.