Improving of Software Process Quality

Zeynep KAREL Vestel Sav. San. AS. Quality Manager Chemical Engineer BSc, Environment Engineer MSc., EOQ Quality Auditor, National Quality Award Assessor (2006 – Public process)

The most important factor in the success of software companies that are improving and procuring continuity of software process quality is the policy of top level management that will be implemented. The necessary support to achieve this goal is provided by the top level management, and if the top level management backs up the goal, then all members of organization take responsibility and support the activities that are required for improvement of procedures.

Therefore, we can describe the studies of software process quality as Total Quality Management. When worldwide information is taken into consideration, it shows that total quality studies are 70% unsuccessful, and the foremost reason for this is recorded as the management’s carelessness and/or lack of resolution. Naturally, the first crucial factor of quality of the software process is resolutions of top management, that will be the dominant success factor; the second crucial factor is the participation and support of all members of organization; lastly, the third factor is the model chosen for that process.

Process Improvement Model: CMMI CMM (Capability Maturity Model) was improved firstly in 1986 in the USA. CMM 0.1 version was published in 1991 and in 1993 revised version 1.1 was published. While 2.0 was about to be published, DoD withdrew it and they focused on improving CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration). Also, recently there have been many alternative models. But none of these were approved as widely as CMMI. In 2000, there was CMMI 1.02 , in 2002 version 1.1 version came about, and in 2006 version 1.2 was published.

CMMI as a process improvement approach provides necessary elements to software companies along with system engineering companies for effective processing.

CMMI is important and provides an approach, a vision, common language on the way of improving. CMMI can be used to guide process improvement for organization or the project and provides a potential to integrate all functions allocated in the organization, to determine the goals and prerequisite of process, to define a way for quality process and to measure the existing process.

CMMI is composed of 5 Maturity levels. Maturity Level 1. Initial: The process is informal or random. Performance (termination time of projects, costs, etc.) cannot be estimated.

Maturity Level 2. Managed: Project management discipline is stable and performance can be estimated. Maturity Level 3. Defined: System Engineering, Software Engineering and management processes are defined and integrated. Maturity Level 4. Quantitatively Managed : Products and process can be quantitatively controlled. Maturity Level 5. Optimizing: Process improvement is institutionalized. Categories of CMMI levels and process fields are demonstrated in detail in Table 1.

CMMI – Levels and Process Areas and Category

Category: S:Support, P:Project Management, PM: Process Management , E: Engineering One of the vital elements of improvement studies of Software Process Quality is collecting criterions about the projects performed by the organization. Thus data base can be obtained for monitoring development and planning projects better in the future.

Organizations can easily ensure service/ product for the future projects according to clients prefer with the data base that it obtained. One of the significant issue that a company, demands to improve Software Process Quality, should pay attribute, is Evaluation/ Inspection. Evaluation, being a process in which a company’s present situation is reported, is called as inspection if it is done by the customer, authorized or government organization.

Evaluation report is a document in which existing shortcomings are listed with the order of importance according to Process Quality Level that the company goals to reach. This report leads process improvement studies and is used for the reviewing of success of studies and improvements. Preparing the report that will be a base for the process improvement studies, in an acceptable level is important.

Since the beginning of 2007 it is pronounced that conformity to CMMI level 3 will be essential especially in defence programs, for the software companies, in Turkey. So, some of the software companies intensify its CMMI studies. Following companies can be given as an example for thus studies; Aydın Yazılım (AYESAS), HAVELSAN and MILSOFT companies got Level 3 certificate in 2003; MILSOFT CMMI got Level 5 in 2005; Koç Sistem, Meteksan Sistem and STM AS got Level 3 in 2006.

It will be useful to look at the study of SEI (Software Engineering Institute) to demonstrate the situation of CMMI studies around the world. In the study of SEI in 2006, the organization that had CMMI were categorized according to their CMMI certificate levels and the fields they study in. The study composes of organization in about 50 countries among which there is Turkey. Those organizations had CMMI certificate or applied to it.

The Table 2 demonstrates that there are totally 1377 organization that participated in the study. 8.4 % of them has no certificate or in obtaining process; 1.9% has Level 1; 33.3% has Level 2; 33.8 has Level 3; 4.4 has Level 4; and 18.2% has Level 5 certificate. Out of 1377 evaluated organization 396 of them are contractors that bid in military and other official tenders and 50 of them are military and civil government organization. Remaining 391 organization are commercial organization that are active in other fields.

According to that study, distribution of organizations that have CMMI, according to their disciplines is demonstrated in Table 3. As given in the table, System and Software Engineering and Software Engineering disciplines are the top fields that have CMMI certificate.

Even if not certain, this study shows a picture about CMMI activities around the world.

The organizations want to be successful, require applying the systems in which process of role, duty and control is better defined and supervised. Thus they want improve their success.

As well known, especially the organizations take parts in defence industry are study in system engineering discipline. It would not be wrong to add software engineering to this. Table 3 highlights a truth. If you want to improve success, it’s time for the organizations that are in defence industry to pay attribute to CMMI studies and to put the thoughts in to action.

Process improvement study is completely a project and it is essential to plan, support, control and finalize. As mentioned above, two issues are important in a successful process improvement project:

- Support of the top level management to the project

- Defining correctly (evaluation report) Software Process Quality

Improvement Studies are subject to the same natural laws.

If you want to increase the possibility of success of software process improvement project in a software firm, you have to ensure the most powerful in company client, namely the top-management to support and get an evaluation team to specify the requirements of process improvement properly.

Best wishes to companies on their way to success. For more information about CMMI subjects:

www.nitelik.net
www.sei.cmu.edu

Zeynep KAREL completed her primary, secondary and high school education in Gölcük. She received her B.Sc. degree at the Chemical Engineering Department of the Engineering and Architecture Faculty in Gazi University, Ankara and her M.Sc. degree in department of Environmental Engineering at the Institute of Science and Technology in the same university. Since 1996, in addition to various Quality Assurance, Lead Assessor and similar quality educations, she successfully completed the Business Management Certification Program for Engineers at the Business Economics and Research and Application Center of the Political Science Faculty in Ankara University. After working as a Quality Manager at a private company in 1998, Karel worked as a consultant at SSM as the Quality Assurance Expert during 1999-2005. In addition, she conducted AQAP quality audits of the private and public facilities as the Quality Auditor and also, conducted quality configuration audits of Defence Industry projects and took part in NATO and National Confidential Certification audits of facilities. Zeynep Karel successfully completed the KALDER Lead Assessor training program in 2000. After completing the EOQ Quality Auditor training program in 2001, she was one of the first people who became as the EOQ Quality Auditor in Turkey. She still holds the titles of TSE Quality Auditor and EOQ Quality Auditor. In 2005, she also completed EFQM education and National Award Assessor training programs. In 2006, she became a National Quality Award Assessor. Karel has been working as a Quality Manager at Vestel Defence Industry Inc. since 2005.