A business goal-based approach to achieving systems engineering capability maturity

Any process improvement program should be driven by and related to some set of business or over-arching organizational needs. By considering change drivers in concert with the organization strategic objectives and "pains" one can develop a vision of the desired state, what the organization should look like and how it should behave after the desired changes are achieved. An appropriate reference model is then chosen and used in an assessment to identify improvement opportunities. Based on the assessment findings an action plan is developed and implemented which addresses both specific process changes and organization cultural issues. Finally, an appropriate set of measures is defined and implemented to help measure the effects of the various changes.