Establish and maintain tailoring criteria and guidelines for the organization’s set of standard processes.

Tailoring criteria and guidelines describe the following:

·         How the organization’s set of standard processes and organizational process assets are used to create defined processes

·         Mandatory requirements that must be satisfied by defined processes (e.g., the subset of organizational process assets that are essential for any defined process)

·         Options that can be exercised and criteria for selecting among options

·         Procedures that must be followed in performing and documenting process tailoring

Flexibility in tailoring and defining processes is balanced with ensuring appropriate consistency of processes across the organization. Flexibility is needed to address contextual variables such as the domain; nature of the customer; cost, schedule, and quality tradeoffs; technical difficulty of the work; and experience of the people implementing the process. Consistency across the organization is needed so that organizational standards, objectives, and strategies are appropriately addressed, and process data and lessons learned can be shared.

Tailoring is a critical activity that allows controlled changes to processes due to the specific needs of a project or a part of the organization. Processes and process elements that are directly related to critical business goals and objectives should usually be defined as mandatory (allowing less variation), but processes and process elements that are less critical or only indirectly affect business objectives may allow for more tailoring (and therefore more variation). The amount of tailoring could also depend on the project’s lifecycle model, the supplier, or the acquirer-supplier relationship.

Tailoring criteria and guidelines may allow for using a standard process “as is,” with no tailoring.

Typical Work Products

1.    Tailoring guidelines for the organization’s set of standard processes

Subpractices

1.    Specify selection criteria and procedures for tailoring the organization’s set of standard processes.

To fully leverage the supplier’s process capability, the acquirer may choose to minimize the tailoring of the supplier’s standard processes. Depending on the interfaces of the acquirer’s processes with the supplier’s processes, the acquirer’s standard processes may be tailored to allow the supplier to execute its standard processes.

2.    Specify the standards used for documenting defined processes.

3.    Specify the procedures used for submitting and obtaining approval of waivers from requirements of the organization’s set of standard processes.

4.    Document tailoring guidelines for the organization’s set of standard processes.

5.    Conduct peer reviews on the tailoring guidelines.

6.    Revise tailoring guidelines as necessary.