Capability Maturity Model Integration (Cmmi) for Small Organizations

Software Process Improvement (SPI) is a large area of expertise that deals with software development standard processes and is a progression of proven methods of process improvement from many different methodologies. Personal Software Process (PSP) and Team Software Process (TSP) complement the implementation of Capability Maturity Model Implementation (CMMI) and can be applied gradually from the individual, to the team, and then to the organization. These solutions from Carnegie Melon\u27s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) are leading edge for the field of process improvement. Solutions like this consume many resources, are very complex, require years to implement, and can be costly. The SEI solutions offer an industry standard for SPI. Three case studies were analyzed to provide insight into the benefits of CMMI for small organizations. Decisions that steer these solutions generally involve scheduling, quality, and cost. Depending on the individual needs of an organization, the CMMI technology can fulfill what is required. The example case studies were examined and concluded that given favorable conditions, implementing CMMI is feasible for small organizations

Assessing the business value of software process improvement using CMMI® in South Africa

The focus of software process improvement is on enhancing product quality and productivity to increase business competitiveness and profitability. The Capability Maturity Model Integration or CMMI® remains the dominant standard for software process improvement globally. The lack of software quality standards such as CMMI® is seen as one of the causes of the current uncompetitive state of the South African software industry and so in 2007, a pilot programme called “Bringing CMMI® to South Africa” was launched. This research focused on the experiences of the South African organisations participating in the South African CMMI® pilot study through a combination of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The aim was to assist future managerial decision making to assess the business value CMMI® can bring to South African software organisations. The research found that the adoption of CMMI® improved both the internal quality and efficiencies as well as opportunities for growth. The research also established that CMMI® cannot be regarded as a silver bullet solution and that while process improvements can cause short-term upheaval, there are longer-term tangible and intangible benefits. It is, however, key that the organisational aspects of the change be properly managed. A lack of awareness of quality standards or actual demand for CMMI® along with the relatively high implementation and support costs are further preventing its adoption in South Africa. The recommendations resulting from the research, including a model, are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided. CopyrightDissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)unrestricte

An agile information flow consolidator for delivery of quality software projects: technological perspective from a South African start-up

In today’s knowledge-based economy, modern organisations understand the importance of technology in their quest to be considered global leaders. South African markets like others worldwide are regularly flooded with the latest technology trends which can complicate the acquisition, use, management and maintenance of software. To achieve a competitive edge, companies tend to leverage agile methods with the best possible combination of innovative supporting tools as a key differentiator. Software technology firms are in this light faced with determining how to leverage technology and efficient development processes for them to consistently deliver quality software projects and solutions to their customer base. Previous studies have discussed the importance of software development processes from a project management perspective. African academia has immensely contributed in terms of software development and project management research which has focused on modern frameworks, methodologies as well as project management techniques. While the current research continues with this tradition by presenting the pertinence of modern agile methodologies, it additionally further describes modern agile development processes tailored in a sub-Saharan context. The study also aims novelty by showing how innovative sometimes disruptive technology tools can contribute to producing African software solutions to African problems. To this end, the thesis contains an experimental case study where a web portal is prototyped to assist firms with the management of agile project management and engineering related activities. Literature review, semi-structure interviews as well as direct observations from the industry use case are used as data sources. Underpinned by an Activity Theory analytical framework, the qualitative data is analysed by leveraging content and thematic oriented techniques. This study aims to contribute to software engineering as well as the information systems body of knowledge in general. The research hence ambitions to propose a practical framework to promote the delivery of quality software projects and products. For this thesis, such a framework was designed around an information system which helps organizations better manage agile project management and engineering related activities.Information SciencePh. D. (Information Systems

Assessing Project Management Maturity on Portuguese Organizations

Nowadays, it’s getting harder and harder for many organizations to keep their sustainability and remain being market leaders, or just to keep following the market evolution. The concurrency and competency that exists today in the market in each sector is very high and tends to keep growing over the years, resulting in a need for organizations to create and further develop competitive advantages. To be able to keep their sustainability and develop new and improved services and products, associated with the development of competitive advantages, as needed, organizations need to implement Project Management processes, aligned with the top management perspective of what is the definition and how to manage the organizational strategic objectives. The OPM3 Portugal project started at the beginning of 2011, designed by a Project Management expert consultant organization that also does research and development – Ambithus. It was designed to evaluate the Project Management Maturity in Portuguese organizations, applying the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®) standard from Project Management Institute (PMI) (PMI 2013b). In order to improve their processes, organizations needed to be assessed on their processes and methodologies in such a way that the applied tools and techniques could be evaluated from a quantity and quality perspective. By doing this, it became possible for an organization to identify which processes were not implemented or were not being established or followed, making this inside knowledge an important and definitive part for the understanding of which strategic implementations were needed to manage the organizational projects, programs, portfolios, activities and the needed resources and it’s management. Over the recent years, all kinds of organizations have attempted to define with more precision their goals and objectives for their short and long term and at the same time specific actions – projects – to organize the strategies to achieve them. However, very often, the strategies outlined do not allow us to achieve the results for which they were designed (Demir & Kocabas, 2010). In order to address this problem, Project Management (PM) emerged as a powerful management system, which is increasingly popular in several industries (Shi, 2011), such as the Information Systems and Technologies (IST) industry. To improve their maturity in Project Management, organizations need to obtain a total control and measurability of their organizational processes and to use maturity models so they can test and compare their current performances against Best Practices, if possible the Best Practices that were established by the industry where they operate (Andersen & Jessen, 2003) (Jugdev & Thomas, 2002). One of the most recognized and used standardized maturity model in project management is the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®), organized and managed by the Project Management Institute (PMI) (PMI 2013b). This model, besides providing a method for assessment and systematic improvement for the organization from a simple project to Page 6 of 73 a portfolio of projects, introduces, for the first time, the Best Practices for each one of the processes (Pazderka & Grechenig, 2007). This document explains the OPM3 Portugal project environment and evolvement, the data revision and team development done, the main steps of the investigation and the main concepts applied. To understand the OPM3 Portugal project it is necessary to understand the OPM3® standard principles and the way it has been developed and applied all over the world. In this document it is also presented some of the other models and the reasoning to choose this one is explained. The OPM3 Portugal Project planning and organizing processes, the individual organizational assessments, the country Project Management level, the benefits of the methodology and its main phases are explained. The OPM3® Methodology is also fully explained and also the way it was adapted to the OPM3 Portugal project. This document also addresses the project key results: the scientific project results, the one hundred planned organizations that were addressed and their sectors and dimensions, the cluster processes that were studied by the project team, the several different ways of analyzing the data, the result organization and its cluster association processes. The sectorial maturity is presented for each of the sectors, as it is also presented the improvement plans for those sectors. Jose Angelo's participation on the project is fully explained. The conclusions and future work are also addressed

EMPIRICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF SOFTWARE QUALITY

The research topic focuses on the characterization of software quality considering the main software elements such as people, process and product. Many attributes (size, language, testing techniques etc.) probably could have an effect on the quality of software. In this thesis we aim to understand the impact of attributes of three P’s (people, product, process) on the quality of software by empirical means. Software quality can be interpreted in many ways, such as customer satisfaction, stability and defects etc. In this thesis we adopt ‘defect density’ as a quality measure. Therefore the research focus on the empirical evidences of the impact of attributes of the three P’s on the software defect density. For this reason empirical research methods (systematic literature reviews, case studies, and interviews) are utilized to collect empirical evidence. Each of this research method helps to extract the empirical evidences of the object under study and for data analysis statistical methods are used. Considering the product attributes, we have studied the size, language, development mode, age, complexity, module structure, module dependency, and module quality and their impact on project quality. Considering the process attributes, we have studied the process maturity and structure, and their impact on the project quality. Considering the people attributes, we have studied the experience and capability, and their impact on the project quality. Moreover, in the process category, we have studied the impact of one testing approach called ‘exploratory testing’ and its impact on the quality of software. Exploratory testing is a widely used software-testing practice and means simultaneous learning, test design, and test execution. We have analyzed the exploratory testing weaknesses, and proposed a hybrid testing approach in an attempt to improve the quality. Concerning the product attributes, we found that there exist a significant difference of quality between open and close source projects, java and C projects, and large and small projects. Very small and defect free modules have impact on the software quality. Different complexity metrics have different impact on the software quality considering the size. Product complexity as defined in Table 53 has partial impact on the software quality. However software age and module dependencies are not factor to characterize the software quality. Concerning the people attributes, we found that platform experience, application experience and language and tool experience have significant impact on the software quality. Regarding the capability we found that programmer capability has partial impact on the software quality where as analyst capability has no impact on the software quality. Concerning process attributes we found that there is no difference of quality between the project developed under CMMI and those that are not developed under CMMI. Regarding the CMMI levels there is difference of software quality particularly between CMMI level 1 and CMMI level 3. Comparing different process types we found that hybrid projects are of better quality than waterfall projects. Process maturity defined by (SEI-CMM) has partial impact on the software quality. Concerning exploratory testing, we found that exploratory testing weaknesses induce the testing technical debt therefore a process is defined in conjunction with the scripted testing in an attempt to reduce the associated technical debt of exploratory testing. The findings are useful for both researchers and practitioners to evaluate their project

Innovation, evaluation and measurement: macro-level and firm-level perspectives

Innovation is recognised as a difficult domain to assess and to measure. Innovation indicators are necessary to characterise innovation dynamics and to assess the effects of public policies supporting innovation or, from a micro perspective, return on investment, including the creation of conditions conducive to research, development and innovation activities. Moreover, it is also important to observe the role of the different actors, whether companies, the main drivers of innovation, or other entities in the innovation system. At country level, research has highlighted the importance of analysing innovation performance. Also, several studies have focused approaches developed by international organisations, in particular the European Commission. Part I of this chapter relates to a macro-level perspective applied to innovation measurement. Companies are eager to develop and apply methodologies contributing to capture innovation results. A problem in innovation management is how to do it. A framework model was proposed and applied, considering three levels of evaluation of innovation activities and projects, following a Return on Investment approach. Part II of this chapter aims to analyse how companies are managing innovation, which practices have been implemented and what framework could be designed to promote their capabilities to evaluate and measure innovation. It will contribute to the understanding of innovation measurement at firm level and to a more systematic approach for innovation management.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

Benefit realisation lifecycle management in IT-related business projects

IT enabled business projects are perceived to under-deliver, with between 20% and 35% meeting business expectations.[4] Despite improving IT and Project Management practices over the last 15 years, corresponding improvements in business benefits have not materialised. Research suggests that 21% of expenditure in IT is wasted[35] and based on 2008 BMI data this equates to R 12.0 billion in South Africa[11]. 96% of CEO’s blame this non-performance on their CIO[33]. This research found that most organisations cannot identify the person accountable for benefit realisation and a Benefit Realisation Plan is a rarity. Little literature relating to benefit realisation exists. This research defines a lifecycle for Benefit Realisation and Optimisation. It identifies critical practices that support benefit realisation and defines a skeletal process for managing the lifecycle. Improving ROI by up to ten times[46], significantly reducing business risk, enhanced governance and better resource utilisation are some “benefits” of managing the Benefit Realisation Lifecycl