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” [ CITATION Mar08 \l 1033 ], 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 [ CITATION SEI10 \l 1033 ], 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 [ CITATION Sam04 \l 1033 ] .
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[ CITATION Hen09 \l 1033 ].

Source: [ CITATION Hen09 \l 1033 ]

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.