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Abstract:
Worldwide data has shown us that reaching Level 3 is a journey requiring long term commitment of the company and dedicated effort of individuals. Within constantly changing global economy, companies are having difficulties in sustaining the commitment and resources for a traditional software process improvement programme. As a result, we often face with failed improvement projects, demotivated SEPG members, and a strong resistance to any future improvement initiatives. We propose a different path to improvement which enabled us to fully satisfy the requirements of Level 3 within 7 months, starting with a quality system with missing Level 2 elements. The main ingredients of the project were exceptionally committed managers, dedicated quality personnel, a tradition of doing things right, and involvement of experienced consultants.

The initial internal assessment had shown us a gap between the project practices, and process definitions, and some important missing practices from Level 2 key process areas. A task team was formed which included two consultants, the software quality manager, and a senior project manager experienced in software quality practices. The task team had constantly been in contact with the software director of the company. The major activities performed by the task team within the first four months were improving the process definitions by reflecting the practices of the project teams as well as with Level 3 requirements, organizing data collected by the project teams into a single, coherent metric database, organizing the process architecture, and extensive training of the whole software development department. At the beginning of the fifth month, an official SEI assessor performed a mini-assessment which indicated that we were on the right track. The final CMM Level 3 assessment will be performed at the end of March 2003. Our experience has proved to us that with a dedicated team, and committed management the leap to Level 3 can be achieved in a short time which increases the motivation of the development team as well as the satisfying the business goals of the company.