About Cycles

Cycles describe the frequency with which activities are performed or work products produced and updated. Cycles define the day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month operations of the software development organization. Cycles are about operational management; the production of working code. MSF for CMMI® Process Improvement seeks to separate out the operational management of the organization from the corporate governance of the organization. The first asks for a focus on "are we good at software engineering?" whilst the second asks for a focus on "are we making best use of our software engineering resources?" Operational management is about capacity, quality, and reliable, low variation engineering. Governance is about making best use of the shareholder's or tax payer's funds through the optimal utilization of capacity.