Organizational Training (OT) (CMMI-ACQ)

Organizational Training addresses training provided to support the organization’s strategic business objectives and to meet the tactical training needs that are common across projects and support groups. Training needs identified by individual projects and support groups to meet their specific needs are handled at the project and support group level and are outside the scope of the Organizational Training process area.

An organizational training program involves the following activities:

• Identifying the training needed by the organization
• Obtaining and providing training to address those needs
• Establishing and maintaining a training capability
• Establishing and maintaining training records
• Assessing training effectiveness

Effective training requires the assessment of needs, planning, instructional design, and appropriate training media (e.g., workbooks, computer software), as well as a repository of training process data. As an organizational process, the main components of training include a managed training development program, documented plans, staff with an appropriate mastery of disciplines and other areas of knowledge, and mechanisms for measuring the effectiveness of the training program.

Identifying process training needs is based primarily on the skills required to perform the organization’s set of standard processes.



Certain skills can be effectively and efficiently imparted through vehicles other than classroom training experiences (e.g., informal mentoring). Other skills require more formalized training vehicles, such as in a classroom, by web-based training, through guided self study, or via a formalized on-the-job training program. The formal or informal training vehicles employed for each situation should be based on an assessment of the need for training and the performance gap to be addressed. The term “training” used throughout this process area is used broadly to include all of these learning options.

Success in training is indicated by the availability of opportunities to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to perform new and ongoing enterprise activities.

Skills and knowledge can be technical, organizational, or contextual. Technical skills pertain to the ability to use equipment, tools, materials, data, and processes required by a project or process. Organizational skills pertain to behavior within and according to the staff members’ organization structure, role and responsibilities, and general operating principles and methods. Contextual skills are the self-management, communication, and interpersonal abilities needed to successfully perform work in the organizational and social context of the project and support groups.

This process area applies to developing acquirer skills and knowledge so that those acquirers in the organization can perform their roles effectively and efficiently. However, these practices can also apply to developing the supplier skills and knowledge. Topics can include acquirer business practices (e.g., acceptance, invoicing) as well as practices that the acquirer desires to be performed in a particular way (e.g., reflect lean thinking) or a collaborative way (e.g., using an Agile approach).