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Vinson Kurian

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, June 11

THE Bangalore-based Software Quality Centre (SQC) is offering small and medium sized companies in Kerala the option of talking with leading private banks for part-funding the process of quality assessments/ improvement against the Capability Maturity Models (CMM) of Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute (SEI).

SQC is an authorised external Transition Partner for SEI in India. The "sunsetting" of the CMM models in vogue will go as per plan by December 2003 and the world will have to transit to the newer and better model - the CMM Integration. Called CMMI, this is essentially a combination of the existing Software CMM, Systems CMM, Integrated Product Development CMM (IPD CMM) and Supplier Sourcing.

Earlier this year, SQC performed the one and only CMMI assessment at Level 5 covering all these model components for L&T EmSyS, Mysore.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Krishnan Puthucode, Director and Chief Executive Officer, said SQC would help facilitate the linkage between interested companies in Kerala and a preferred group of private bankers for the CMMI programme. He declined to divulge the identity of the banks for confidentiality reasons. "We are willing to help out smaller companies in Kerala that may be interested, but simply cannot afford the cost of assessments and training. This funding could go up to as much as 60 per cent of the costs, subject to company strengths and credit worthiness. This scheme does not have a precedent in India, but we believe this could help smaller companies get the opportunity to move up to higher quality improvement programmes ultimately resulting in better business performance", Mr Krishnan said.

Explaining the SQC initiative, he said the company is in talks with organisations such as the export promotion councils to help CMM/CMMI assessed companies to better their business prospects worldwide. SQC also offers customised solutions that help companies internalise the process improvements rather than depend on an external consultant to help institutionalise the processes. The SQC training courses conducted at client sites help them to learn and "live" the processes themselves, rather than get back to primitive methods after assessments are over.

SQC has also offered to conduct promotional educational and training programmes in the State next year to educate and remove myths and demystify the CMMI models and SEI plans to large number of companies in the State. The company intends to evolve cost-sensitive solutions for SMEs and systems companies in Kerala, considering their "huge" potential for growth. "Ultimately we would like Kerala to be number one or two in software exports and move up as an investment destination. SQC wants to facilitate this, and help the State move up the value chain", Mr Krishnan said. Other factors that support this growth profile are the already mature software population in the State and the initiatives undertaken by the State Government to promote IT, he added.

10-15 pc extra staff strength urged

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: SEI data shows that about 80 per cent of companies implementing CMM and CMMI are less than 200 people in strength. This being the case, there is an increasing need to effectively address the effects on the investments and efforts that these companies would have to put in for these quality improvement paradigms, says Mr Krishnan.

There are two aspects that an organisation needs to consider while implementing any model based process improvement programme. These also happen to be the FAQs that SQC has been confronted with in so many instances.

First of all, the effort employees need to put in to formally focus on these issues. "Although we say that quality is part of everyone's job, the CEO would still like to ask the consultant as to how much more effort would people have to put in for quality. This effort typically ranges from 10 to 15 per cent of the effort of each employee's time - which is included as part of their everyday job - but we seldom count effort towards building quality "into" the product/project, but this becomes of prime importance when the CMM effort is being evaluated".

Second, the cost to be spent on the consulting and assessment services that are being commissioned. "This cost varies since many in our competition follow the demand pricing model or competitive pricing model (which is not healthy as far as the service pricing is concerned), rather than the cost-plus model or others of its ilk. Given this, the total costs incurred vary from Rs 8 lakh to 20 lakh from case to case", says Mr Krishnan.

The use of CMM Models is not new to the Indian corporate. Most companies have implemented or are in the process of implementing CMM-based process improvement programmes. India is also the single largest user of the Software CMM outside of the US, with the highest number of Level 4 and Level 5 companies. With this background and the commitment to achieve process maturity by Indian companies, it is important to realise that it is more critical to sustain a level after going through an initial improvement cycle. - V.K.

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