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NAEP Processing Assessment Materials → Capability Maturity Model for 2001

NAEP Technical DocumentationCapability Maturity Model for 2001

The Capability Maturity Model for 2001 included the following four components:

1. The Program Synopsis was created to give the operations groups (printing, packaging, scanning, editing, and scoring) a high level, early view of the expected quantities and schedule. The Program Synopsis was used for early planning purposes. It was often completed during the bid phase to estimate cost.

2. The Business Plan was the prose version of the Program Synopsis. It added the history of the contract, potential risks, and the financial plan. For NAEP, it included the appendices of the NAEP 2001 contract—Statement of Work, Assumptions, Billing Schedule, and Operations Schedule. Although the milestones and schedule are referenced and their location defined, they were not part of the document.

3. The Customer Requirements Allocation Document (CRAD) broke the various phases into tasks. The phases in this document for NAEP 2001 included printing, packaging, shipping, processing, scoring, trend rescoring, and data delivery. Some of the column headings included the Requirement, Source, Resolution/Comments, Status, Stability, Risk, Priority, and the department that needs to allocate the resources.

4. The Issues Log documented problems that were encountered throughout the process. It also stated a date by which each problem was required to have been resolved and what the resolution was.

The CMM also included software project manager documents:

5. The Functional Specifications detailed the tasks that the software development group must perform. These specifications began with the CRAD and added detail to the software tasks.

6. The Software Development Program Plan (SDPP) was created by the mainframe software project manager. It included plans from the other software groups including:

   • Scanner Engineering Services that defined optical mark reflex fields for the scanner,

   • Applied Technology that defined the intelligent character recognition and constructed-response items,

   • PC Development Services that created the paper scoring system, and

   • Measurement Testing Services that created the NAEP booklet prototypes used for testing purposes and executed the testing of the various other groups.

The SDPP contained all of the estimates, the location of the software schedule, and a high level view of the software commitment.

All documents were audited regularly by the software engineering process group. The audits included an initiation audit in which only the first four documents were reviewed, a commitment audit in which only the Customer Requirements Allocation Document, the Functional Specifications, and the Software Development Program Plan were base lined, and two utilization audits.

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