Organizational process areas contain the cross-project activities related to defining, planning, deploying, implementing, monitoring, controlling, appraising, measuring, and improving processes.

The organizational process areas contain practices that provide the acquiring organization with a capability to develop and deploy processes and supporting assets and to document and share best practices and learning across the organization.

The organizational process areas of CMMI-ACQ are as follows:

·         Organizational Process Focus (OPF)

·         Organizational Process Definition (OPD)

·         Organizational Training (OT)

Organizational Process Focus practices help the acquiring organization to plan, implement, and deploy organizational process improvements based on an understanding of the current strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s processes and process assets. Candidate improvements to the organization’s processes are obtained through activities in the processes of related projects. These activities include generating process improvement proposals, measuring processes, collecting lessons learned in implementing the processes, and evaluating products and services.

Using Organizational Process Focus practices, the acquirer encourages participation of suppliers in process improvement activities. Suppliers may be involved in developing process action plans if processes that define interfaces between the acquirer and supplier are targeted for improvement.

Organizational Process Definition practices form the basis for establishing and maintaining the organization’s set of standard processes, work environment standards, rules and guidelines for the operation of integrated teams, and other assets based on the process needs and objectives of the organization.

These other assets include descriptions of lifecycle models, process tailoring guidelines, and process-related documentation and data. Projects tailor the organization’s set of standard processes to create their defined processes using Integrated Project Management practices. Experiences and work products from performing these defined processes, including measurement data, process descriptions, process artifacts, and lessons learned, are incorporated, as appropriate, into the organization’s set of standard processes and other assets.

The acquirer’s set of standard processes may also describe standard interactions with suppliers. Supplier interactions are typically characterized by the deliverables expected from suppliers, acceptance criteria applicable to those deliverables, standards (e.g., architecture and technology standards), and standard milestone and progress reviews. The acquirer defines in the supplier agreement how changes to organizational process assets that impact the supplier (e.g., standard supplier deliverables and acceptance criteria) are deployed.

The purpose of implementing Organizational Training practices is to develop the skills and knowledge of people so they can perform their roles effectively and efficiently. For example, an acquiring organization may want to develop its project managers’ capability in managing supplier agreements.

Using Organizational Training practices helps the acquirer identify the strategic training needs of the organization as well as the tactical training needs that are common across projects and support groups. In particular, training is created or obtained to develop the skills required to perform the organization’s set of standard processes. The main components of training include a managed training development program, documented plans, personnel with appropriate knowledge, and mechanisms for measuring the effectiveness of the training program.