September 9, 2004

TCG Provides Vital CMMI Mentoring Service to Government and Industry

Educating industry and government in process improvement best practices

Washington, DC, September 9, 2004: TCG, a leading provider of grants management solutions to the Federal government and a CMMI Level 2 small business, today announced a new service to educate industry and government organizations about the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and its application to government IT contracts.

CMMI is the de facto worldwide standard of excellence in software engineering. Numerous U.S. federal departments and private sector organizations have made compliance with CMMI best practices an eligibility requirement in order to compete on certain contracts. However, understanding of CMMI and its implications for government agencies and industry remains at a low level. TCG’s CMMI Mentoring Service accelerates and improves organization’s understanding of CMMI and the process of achieving a successful assessments for government IT projects and departments.

Being assessed at CMMI Level 2 involves developing an in-depth understanding of CMMI Level 2 goals and practices, defining Level 2‑compliant processes for projects, and demonstrating consistent adherence to those processes over time.

TCG’s CMMI Level 2 Mentoring Services include :

  • An in-depth program of basic and optional sessions designed to assist organizations undertaking software development tasks in acquiring the knowledge and tools they need to achieve a successful CMMI Level 2 assessment. The program consists of a series of step-by-step training sessions, starting with creating the organizational infrastructure necessary to support CMMI, continuing on through the implementation of defined processes within an existing project, and culminating with a process improvement schedule that will ensure the organization continues along the path toward a successful CMMI Level 2 assessment.
  • Regular, ongoing advisory services support for the CMMI process improvement efforts, including participation in the Software Engineering Process Office (SEPO, or equivalent), documentation and artifact reviews, one-on-one mentoring, training of additional staff, and assistance with assessment preparation.

TCG’s CMMI Level 2 Mentoring Services are not merely a series of training sessions. The company provides a hands-on program in which government and industry participants create the policies, process descriptions, tools, and infrastructure necessary for implementing and sustaining CMMI Level 2 best practices.

“As OMB and GAO have repeatedly demonstrated, the government is committed to IT project quality and project excellence,” said Daniel Turner, President of TCG. “The best way to achieve those goals is by educating the people responsible for them in process improvement best practices. We consider the CMMI Mentoring Service to be of unique benefit to government and industry IT practitioners, and I’m delighted that TCG is delivering this groundbreaking approach to our clients.”

About TCG
TCG (Turner Consulting Group, https://www.tcg.com), a Washington, DC-based company, specializes in delivering grants management solutions to the Federal government, and is responsible for pioneering integration work with Grants.gov, the government’s grants applications portal.

The company was SEI-assessed at Capability Maturity Model Integration Maturity Level 2 (CMMI Level 2 for Software as defined by the CMMI version 1.1) in April 2004 after an intense nine-month effort and is one of about 701 companies worldwide to have achieved such recognition of process excellence.

TCG focuses on helping government agencies use the power of the Internet and the Web to better interact with the public, and to generate internal cost savings and efficiencies. TCG projects have won awards for their groundbreaking achievements, including piloting the first inter-agency grants management system, and creating the first inter-agency government system to receive secure information from the general public. That system, Interagency Edison (http://www.iedison.gov), was built in 1995 for NIH’s specific needs. Today the system serves the invention and patent reporting requirements of 21 Federal agencies.

TCG was one of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in the United States in 2001, as ranked by Inc. magazine. The firm has been on Washington Technology’s Fast 50.

For more information, contact David G. Cassidy on 202–742-8471 or david.cassidy@tcg.com.

About SEI and CMMI
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics [OUSD (AT&L)].

The SEI’s core purpose is to help others make measured improvements in their software engineering capabilities.

SEI has developed six Capability Maturity Models. CMMI is the result of SEI’s continuing efforts to define maturity models that describe best practices for engineering organizations. Prior to CMMI, SEI defined Software CMM (SW-CMM), which has now been sunset to encourage adoption of CMMI.

The SEI’s goals in developing CMMs include;

  • addressing software engineering and other disciplines that have an affect on software development and maintenance
  • providing integrated process improvement reference models
  • building broad community consensus
  • harmonizing with related standards
  • enabling efficient improvement across disciplines relevant to software development and maintenance

More information about SEI and CMMI can be found at http://www.sei.cmu.edu.