Process Improvement Essentials

Chapter 1. Introduction

A FEW YEARS AGO, I ATTENDED AN IBM RATIONAL UNIFIED PROCESS TRADE SHOW, HELD AT A CONVENTION center somewhere just outside Dallas. The center was a sprawling complex—hotels, restaurants, convention halls—anchored by an enormous indoor arboretum, a five-story glass-domed cathedral landscaped with palmetto and live oak, featuring, on its west wall, an exact replica of the Alamo, only at about twice the size.

Naturally it was a Disneyland-clean version of the Alamo. And the stone pathways, trickling canals, and set-aside grottos were all exquisitely manicured to reflect a kind of comfortable glow balanced between true life and cartoon. The theme of the show was something like, “Achieving Your Quality Goals.” As I looked around, I knew this place was the perfect choice for that. Whoever had taken on this landscape project had not let up until every blade of grass had been trimmed to shape, oiled green, and shellacked properly into place.

This was Wednesday evening, after the show’s opening, and the sponsors were hosting a huge cocktail reception in this arboretum. So after an afternoon of moving in and out of sessions and giving a brief talk on tailoring CMMI to organizational size, I found myself in a packed crowd in front of the Alamo, standing just under St. Jerome, at the best bar in the place. That’s where Scott Brenner introduced himself.^[*]

Scott was a senior IT director for a major health-claims processing company, one of the largest in the nation, and ...