The prominence of the Software Quality function in the IT companies was mainly due to the Software CMM, which required an independent function to deploy and monitor adherence to the defined processes in the projects. The role of the Software Quality personnel was initially to help the project tailor the standard processes to their specific needs and to audit for conformance. The model did not make it clear that as the organization matured ownership for processes and quality of deliverables should be well integrated with the delivery teams (project teams) so that the so-called overheads are minimized.
The customer needs and priorities always revolve around the project results at better cost efficiencies. But, the Quality group is seldom in the loop with the customer because of lack of visibility or the customer organization's choice to keep the communication through the delivery teams only.So, as years passed, the role of the Quality group has stagnated to maintaining the processes, for whatever its worth, and to run certain routine checks and balances. Having reduced to a support function, rather than an expert consultant, the Quality professional finds himself/herself facing an uninteresting career prospect in the organization, mostly limited to operational management activities. In the worse scenario he/she is treated as a necessary evil because of the compulsion of keeping the quality certifications alive. CMM caused harm by separating the Software Quality function from the Project Management and not emphasizing on the integration of the responsibility of quality with the project manager's responsibilities. CMMI has not done much in improving the prospects of the Software Quality Professional, and the story will continue with more assessments and added administrative tracking that has been introduced in V1.2 of SCAMPI. Commiserations to the Software Quality Professional!
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Friday, December 29, 2006
Relevance or otherwise of CMMI
The SEI has realized the need for a business model to promote its maturity models by bringing out V1.2 of the assessment method, SCAMPI. The similarity of the new method to ISO 9001:2000 is obvious and for the first time SEI has shown interest in administering the assessments directly with the introduction of the validity period of three years.
When the Indian software companies adopted the CMM and CMMI models for marketing leverage in the late 90's the SEI didn't have to do anything special to spread the method in the industry. However, of late, there is no significant advantage for companies already at 'high maturity levels' to upgrade to CMMI V1.2. One of the features of the earlier CMM assessments (CBA-IPI) was that there was no endorsement from SEI about any assessments and the assessment results didn't have any validity period. This resulted in a slowdown of CMMI assessments in India, when there was no specific customer expectation also.
So, it is time SEI acted to revive the maturity model framework and force the companies to commit to the assessment results by way of the new initiatives in V1.2.
If a search for reports on the RoI and Cost-Benefit analysis of complying to CMM or CMMI over the last 10 years, one may not find any worthwhile case study! Cycle time reduction and Productivity improvement in Software services has reached a plateau and it is hard to establish a correlation between the assessed maturity level and the business parameter improvements.
CMMI probably misses out a significant part of the business processes from its purview by limiting the focus on project management and software engineering processes only. Isolated maturity models for Sourcing Capability, Software Acquisition, People Capability, and Business Excellence are not serving the industry due to lack of synergy among them and the perceived overheads in meeting the model and assessment requirements. Why can't India, particularly NASSCOM, show leadership by forming a consortium of leaders in software services industry to define a simple and comprehensive framework for Software Services Excellence, keeping the customer and quality as the central theme?
When the Indian software companies adopted the CMM and CMMI models for marketing leverage in the late 90's the SEI didn't have to do anything special to spread the method in the industry. However, of late, there is no significant advantage for companies already at 'high maturity levels' to upgrade to CMMI V1.2. One of the features of the earlier CMM assessments (CBA-IPI) was that there was no endorsement from SEI about any assessments and the assessment results didn't have any validity period. This resulted in a slowdown of CMMI assessments in India, when there was no specific customer expectation also.
So, it is time SEI acted to revive the maturity model framework and force the companies to commit to the assessment results by way of the new initiatives in V1.2.
If a search for reports on the RoI and Cost-Benefit analysis of complying to CMM or CMMI over the last 10 years, one may not find any worthwhile case study! Cycle time reduction and Productivity improvement in Software services has reached a plateau and it is hard to establish a correlation between the assessed maturity level and the business parameter improvements.
CMMI probably misses out a significant part of the business processes from its purview by limiting the focus on project management and software engineering processes only. Isolated maturity models for Sourcing Capability, Software Acquisition, People Capability, and Business Excellence are not serving the industry due to lack of synergy among them and the perceived overheads in meeting the model and assessment requirements. Why can't India, particularly NASSCOM, show leadership by forming a consortium of leaders in software services industry to define a simple and comprehensive framework for Software Services Excellence, keeping the customer and quality as the central theme?
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