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Introduction
In today's world, software is becoming a larger part of many products and services. As the
importance of software in systems increases, they are strongly influenced by software
quality and by the processes used to acquire, develop and maintain the software.
There is a danger of knowledge not being shared with the rest of the organization and a
potential loss of knowledge when these champions leave the organization. Organization
process improvement depends on continuous monitoring and successive refinement of the
implemented processes.
Ideally a tool that allows companies to model their lifecycle processes, maintain them in a
central repository and provide a framework to standardize, automate, collect and share
metrics will benefit small organizations to adopt CMMI prescribed process improvement
strategies. Also organizations need flexibility in pacing the process improvements, as they
are sensitive to business cycles and employee turnover. Such a tool would have the
following characteristics:
The activity matrix of a generic CMMI process template is partially shown in the table 1:
To further facilitate the adoption of CMMI, Digité is in the process of developing a knowledge
base of SDLC processes based on CMMI guidelines for both staged and continuous
representation. These templates can be further customized by addition or deletion of KPA's,
iterations, key practices, roles and item/workflow templates, prior to deployment. Once the
template is instantiated for a project, the UPF creates a project workspace that employs
terminology, menu functions and user experience consistent with the CMMI model and
guides the project manager through the tailoring process.
After tailoring is completed, detailed project plan can be created using project scheduling
tools such as Microsoft Project® and imported into the system for execution and
monitoring. In addition, during the execution of the project, UPF allows further modifications
to the project based on tailoring guidelines. For example, one may add additional phase or
iteration to the project to support Agile methodologies, or one may add new work-packets
to support additional work orders and track their related effort and cost separately.
Case Study
Aztec Software and Technology Services Ltd., (www.aztecsoft.com) is implementing process
automation using Digité Enterprise to facilitate its CMMI initiatives at its offshore
development center in India. Aztec's specialty is in software product development services
that accelerate the creation of software products, reduces time to market and help make
schedules predictable in order to better manage resources, predict costs, and reduce market
and technology risks.
Founded in 1995, Aztec has serviced more than 100 customers worldwide. Aztec Software
has executed projects with many of the largest global software companies. Project team
sizes vary from 5 to over 300. Since deployment in late 2004, over 10 projects are already
using Digité Enterprise and the rest are adopting it progressively.
The second area is Data Collection and Metrics. Earlier, the organization had disparate tools
for capturing raw data such as Timesheets, Defects and Issues etc. These were tedious
manual efforts involving collating data from these systems, manipulating them and
computing relevant metrics. Visibility into resource utilization and project health was also
quite cumbersome. By using a process automation tool such as Digité Enterprise all the
metrics are collected centrally as a by-product of automation, and available on-demand. To
make CMMI effective, metrics should be automatically collected and instantly visible at any
point in time from anywhere. A traffic signal like project health indicator is essential for
management review when managing multiple projects concurrently. Digité Enterprise's
metrics collection framework is helping in tracking the defects, efforts and schedule
variances, and delivers value to our customers.
Based on the initial success, Aztec plans to move all our future projects to Digité Enterprise.
We are also looking forward to develop a richer knowledge base so that the tool can provide
contextual help on the best practices.”
Summary
For organizations embarking on process improvements based on the CMMI model, tool such
as Digité will help them quickly deploy processes and achieve level of execution consistent
with CMMI goals. Using process compliance metrics, organizations can assess their current
readiness for certification and discover areas of improvement. For CMMI-certified
companies, Digité provides flexibility through the UPF to convert their organizational
processes into Digité templates and manage them over time.
Contact
Learn more about the enterprise-solutions by visiting www.digite.com or contacting
one of our sales representatives in your area.
Copyright © 2007 Digité Inc. All rights reserved. Digité. All other product or company names are used
for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners. * CMMI is
registered trademark of Carnegie Mellon University - Software Engineering Institute (SEI-CMU).