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Wait! Don't start a CMM implementation now!

Vikram Kumar on why it’s a bad idea to start a CMM implementation now SEI-CMM (also known as SW-CMM or CMM), the popular quality model for software, is being phased out, so you could lose a lot of money if you choose to start on CMM now.

Let’s say a CMM level 4 company is considering upgrading itself to CMMI level 5. It has to consider an interesting fact that has emerged, but which has had limited exposure in the media. It is that if you start CMM implementation now, then you could end up losing as much as Rs 6-8 lakh if you choose CMM instead of CMMI.

You could be taken for a ride

After the last quarter of 2005, SEI will not allow any consultant to certify any company as a CMM company. The consultant can only provide CMMI certifications thereafter. Given that most Indian companies take between a year to two years to get certified, if you start the CMM process now you will end up being late for the SEI deadline.

Your consultant may charge you all over again for CMMI training costs—even charging for trainings that are similar to CMM trainings—and you would end up starting nearly from scratch.

What is happening?

When you visit the official CMM home page (http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm), you will find that the entire page now has a background with the word “legacy”—indicating the expiry of CMM.

Starting 2003, SEI—the parents of CMM—have initiated the phasing out (sunset) process for CMM, and will be replacing it completely with CMMI.

Sunset of CMM

The sunset process began in December 2001 with the publication of CMMI V1.1. Thereafter, no updates to the SW-CMM model or training were done. SW-CMM training was allowed to continue till Dec 2003, though partners are allowed to deliver an introduction to SW-CMM till December 2005. No new CMM appraisers and evaluators are trained beyond December 2003. CMM appraisers and evaluators need to make the transition to become SCAMPI (CMMI) Lead Appraisers by December 2005 since SCAMPI (CMMI) would be the only appraisal method beyond December 2005, thus making CMM assessments not available at all.

Benefits of CMMI

CMMI builds on and extends the best practices of the Capability Maturity Model for Software (SW-CMM), the Systems Engineering Capability Model (SECM), and the Integrated Product Development Capability Maturity Model (IPD-CMM).

CMMI is being increasingly adopted by large Indian companies including Infosys, Wipro and i-flex. Some aspects of CMMI include:

• It picks out ‘pain areas’ and implements selectively; an organisation can get assessed only for those areas, and improve and pay accordingly.
• SW-CMM assessment was suited only for software companies, whereas CMMI offers a complete integrated model for software, systems engineering (SE), supplier sourcing (SS) and integrated product and process development (IPPD).
• As per our experience, we have found quotes of consulting charges for CMMI to be 30-40 percent higher than quotes for CMM. We expect that implementation overheads (e.g. salary equivalent of time put in by employees) to also be similarly larger.
• Some of the more significant changes are in the engineering process areas (EPA). The engineering category in CMMI has several new process areas including requirements development, technical solution, product integration and validation.
• The benefits of EPA are well-quantified in L&T’s case. After the CMMI assessment, the company has been able reduce its defect rate to 0.7 per 1,000 lines of code as against 6 per 1,000 lines of code before the CMMI assessment. L&T has been able to catch 70 percent of defects during the product inspection stage, and another 30 percent during the testing process, thereby reducing the product design cycle by half.

Conclusion

CMMI has already been identified as the future of process assessment, with evaluations commencing from FY2002. Are CMM-compliant organisations left behind? The answer is—not much, as customers continue to place both models on par.

CMM and quality models are elimination criteria but not selection criteria (i.e. you may be excluded from applying because of the lack of models, but you will not be selected just because you have the model).

To sum up: in case you are just starting the journey for CMM, you should strongly consider shifting to CMMI, whereas if you already have CMM then you can implement it at a gradual pace and consider moving to CMMI.

The author is director, Maq Software. He may be contacted at vikramk@maqsoftware.com