The result is a carefully worded set of problem statements with buy-in from the participants involved. After an assessment, an organization develops strategic and tactical improvement action plans. An assessment of an organization is only one step in the process improvement life cycle. An assessment should always be preceded with an evaluation of the organization's business goals and be followed by a carefully planned set of improvement actions. The questionnaire is only a sample of the practices required by the SEI Capability Maturity Model.
Assessments dig deeper than just the issues listed in the questionnaire.
They determine the key issues facing the organization using interview and review sessions. Organizations that focus only on the questionnaire or CMM can miss the major issues that a true assessment would uncover. The questionnaire is used during an assessment as a springboard into the discussion sessions. The questionnaire can also be used to help measure process improvement progress between major process assessments.