Process Management and Improvement for CLASS System Development and Maintenance

The Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) has a record of accomplishments based on a managed process for completing development cycles. The process involves management, stakeholders, and development personnel. It gives CLASS personnel explicit guidance to accomplish day-to-day, release, and campaign activities.

Once campaign and release requirements are identified, documented, and agreed upon by stakeholders, changes to the CLASS baseline are monitored through a configuration control board. This board includes executive management, engineering, process, and quality personnel. For operational releases, members from these same groups meet to determine completeness of the release, ensure that training and security needs are met, and agree on operational deployment dates. At the end of every release, lessons learned sessions are held to capture activities that need to be maintained, as well as activities that require improvement. Using best of business practices and Six Sigma-based tools, quality and management personnel complete plans to ensure improvements are made in support of CLASS activities and stakeholders. Finally, independent quality management personnel audit the process baseline to ensure compliance and to identify improvement opportunities.

This process validation and improvement life cycle resulted in a SEI SW-CMMI maturity rating for the CLASS project. This industry-recognized rating was achieved through intergroup planning, coordination, and artifact validation. This accomplishment provided additional evidence of NOAA and CLASS being a recognized leader in system documentation and process management.