Abstract:

The topic is CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) which is a process improvement approach, focuses on improving organisation performance. CMMI in development of organisation and software engineering is a process improvement approach that provides essential elements to organisation for effective process improvement. Currently CMMI addressing three areas of interest, product and service development (CMMI-DEV), service establishment, management, and delivery (CMMI-SVC) and product and service acquisition (CMMI-ACQ). CMMI represented in two forms, continuous and staged, the “staged” representation is most well known which includes five levels of process maturity for organisation. Organisation need to appraise in order to get CMMI certification, there are three classes of appraisal, A, B and C. The paper is “An exploratory study of why organisations do not adopt CMMI” (Staples, Niazi, Jaffery, Abrahams, Byatt, &Murphy, 2008), this paper explores why organisation do not adopt CMMI after doing exploratory study by analysing two months sales data of company selling improvement services and CMMI appraisal. The main reasons of organisation behind not adopting CMMI were: size of organisation as they are small, services are very costly, lack of time, and using another SPI approach. Overall findings of this paper was, small organisation not adopting CMMI because they think it is infeasible or not capable to put in practise. This paper was issued in 2006, and that time, market scenario was different, that’s why paper findings was correct, however, according to SEI, there was a rapid growth in appraisals for small organisations after march 2007, which shows small organisations now implementing CMMI for development in order to improves its Software development processes. Ingleburn Health Clinic total number of employees is 16 which include 5 doctors, two nurses, three physiotherapists and six office staff workers as it is a small organisation and before implementing CMMI level 2 with appraisal B and C (least expensive forms of appraisals), they need to do proper planning with management commitment, as implementation is costly, time consuming and resource intensive.

Introduction:

Software Process Improvement (SPI) is an approach by software engineering researchers to help organisation in developing high quality software efficiently. CMM, CMMI and ISO/IEC 15504 are the types of frameworks which defines practices for software developing organisations. According to the Software Engineering Institute (SEI, 2010), CMMI helps "integrate traditionally separate organizational functions, set process improvement goals and priorities, provide guidance for quality processes, and provide a point of reference for appraising current processes." CMMI includes three areas of interest:

1. Product and service development (CMMI for Development)2. Management, service and delivery (CMMI for Services)3. Service and Product acquisition (CMMI for Acquisition)

Group of experts from government, industry and Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University developed CMMI. CMMI is consistent with the international standard ISO/IEC 15504 and successor of CMM. CMMI is also called as CMMI Product Suite because it is not limited to one area, it can be implemented in software engineering, project management, system engineering, integrated Product and process development and service industry (Ramanujan & Kesh, 2004). Organisation can access their capability for CMMI process level by undergoing an appraisal which includes 3 classes of appraisal, A, B and C. Appraisal A is time-consuming, costly and resource intensive but provides highest levels of assurance and mainly suited for large organisations. Class B less expensive, time consuming and resources intensive and Class C is cheapest and very easy to perform.

Description of the paper:

The paper selected by me was, “An exploratory study of why organisations do not adopt CMMI”. The main reason behind choosing this paper was, as this is an empirical study of reasons why software developing organisation not adopting CMMI on the basis of two months sales data and contact notes of company whose selling CMMI level 2 and Class B and C as an appraisals for process improvement. Level 2 of CMMI is the entry level and appraisals B and C are least expensive and mainly suited for small organisations like Ingleburn health clinic. This study explains relationship between CMMI implementation with the organisational size and type. Author called this study as an “exploratory” because this is the first study which empirically examines the surveyed questions. The key finding of this paper was, small organisation do not want CMMI implementation because they think CMMI implementation was infeasible for them, they are not capable for CMMI implementations, this was the key finding of the paper after analysing sample population of 40 software developing organisations whose not using SPI or do not want CMMI class A, B or C appraisal at the time of study. Author found relationship between size and reason of being a small organisation, Small organisation (less than 20 employees) consider themselves too small for CMMI that’s why its infeasible for them to implement CMMI.

Critical Evaluation:

Researchers not able to find empirical evidence about the issue, Why do software-developing organisations not using CMMI? And all published articles about CMMI describes only post implementation experiences of organisation whose already chosen CMMI or implemented CMMI. Authors reviewed almost 600 papers related to CMMI and they found, there is no published evidence or study, which shows the requirements of organisation who have decided to not adopt CMMI. This paper helps software researchers to analyse needs and requirements of such type of organisation which mainly consists of small organisation in order to motivate them to implement CMMI. The only difference I found in this paper was, it was old study, which was conducted in 2006, and study was limited to Australian software

developing organisations. In this four year time period, market conditions changed a lot, according to Software Engineering Institute (SEI), total number of appraisals from year 2004 to September 2008 was 3000 and there was a continuous increase in organisations going for appraisals. Small organisations also have similar increment but at a very high rate which shows, now, small organisations also going for CMMI implementations at a very fast rate then large and medium organisations. This all caused because, now small organisations understand the implications, benefits associated with CMMI implementation (Schneider, 2009).

Source: (Schneider, 2009)

However, this paper was right at that point of time, because there was sudden increase in small organisation going for an appraisal after march 2007 which is clearly shown in graph mentioned above.

Conclusion:

This paper shows, increasing benefits of SPI was not only way to increase impact of software engineering research into SPI, the number of small software developing organisations is larger than medium and large organisation and most of the small organisation not able to get any benefit of CMMI just because they think or consider it infeasible or incapable to adopt. In order to increase impact of SPI approaches, we need to target and motivate small software developing organisations and make implementations of CMMI processes with little cost and time.

Recommendation for Ingleburn Health Clinic:

Ingleburn health clinic should go for CMMI level 2 implementation as it is a first level which defines collection of process capabilities that mainly focus on supporting process area with class C appraisal which is the cheapest and easiest to perform appraisal. Before implementing, they need to keep in mind following challenges which is faced by large and small organisation after implementing CMMI as lack in management commitment, organisation must do proper planning before implementation, some cases CMMI encourages achievement of higher maturity level instead on improving the process and overall software quality, staffs should trained with the implementation, and sometimes it is difficult in defining and documenting processes. CMMI implementation is costly and resource intensive, however, Ingleburn health clinic should not worry about the ROI (Return on Investment) and resources as they having good patient base of 275 different employers. Return on investment was the only concern which de-motivates small software developing organisation for implementation of SPI approaches.

References:

Ramanujan, S., & Kesh, S. (2004). Comparison of Knowledge management and CMM/CMMI implementation. Journal of American Academy of Business , 271.

Schneider, H. (2009, January). Small Business and CMMI: Sink or Swim? Retrieved 12 9, 2010, from www.executivebrief.com: http://www.executivebrief.com/cmmi/small-business-cmmi/

SEI. (2010). CMMI Overview. Retrieved 12 8, 2010, from www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/index.cfm: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/index.cfm

Staples, M., Niazi, M., Jaffery, R., Abrahams, A., Byatt, P., & Murphy, R. (2008). An exploratory study of why organisations do not adopt CMMI. The Journal of Systems and Software (80) , 883-895.