Panelists include:
Paul Arnold, The Boeing Company,
paul.l.arnold@boeing.com
Richard Fanning, Raytheon-Hughes,
rkfanning@west.raytheon.com
Leitha Purcell, Nothrop Grumman,
purcele@mail.northgrum.com
Additional panelist TBA
Panel Moderator:
George O'Mary, The Boeing Company,
george.w.o'mary@boeing.com
In a typical merger, there is much discussion about complementary
product lines and financial synergy, but often little discussion of
the impacts of the merger on organization process maturity. When two
mature organizations merge, there are significant process assets which
must be combined under a common process improvement strategy. An
organization's policies, procedures, assigned responsibilities,
measurements and analysis, quality assurance program, and management
reviews reflect their unique corporate cultures. Combining two cultures
requires a synthesis of these two sets of process assets, and coping
with the people issues that surround them.
With mergers being commonplace in today's software community, this issue
is timely. The same situation also arises when two (or more) software
organizations team to support a single project. Recent teaming
agreements have seen as many as five Level 3 contractors, and dozens
of subcontractors, teaming to develop a single integrated product,
developed under a single process.
These panelists represent organizations well-versed in mergers.
They will examine all sides of this issue, and compare and contrast
the approaches each of their companies have used in merging corporate
cultures, either permanently or for a project's lifetime. The panelists
will offer practical lessons learned about pitfalls to avoid, and
techniques that work.
Expected Benefits to Attendees:
The audience will understand how corporate mergers and project teaming
affect an organization's culture, from a CMM perspective. The panelists
will present practical techniques for dealing with the problems of a
merger.
Issues include:
- Combining different sets of corporate process assets (policies,
procedures, process databases, etc.)
- Re-establishing senior management commitment
- Combining SEPGs
- Combining training approaches
- Combining organizations with different maturity levels
- Human issues, related to the loss of corporate identity
Coordinator:
Rick Hefner, TRW,
rick.hefner@trw.com
