Hmm... another post for the day...

Now, I am in the mood to blog today... While reading thru macroeconomics I suddenly slipped into some random thoughts and I remembered the wonderful discussion we had today in class about quality and 6 sigma... The discussion explored ISO and invariably SEI CMM as well... In a zombie state, just listening to the discussion, my antennae went up when Sonali, previously a consultant with Accenture, mentioned CMM... I used to work in Future Software in chennai... a company assessed at Level 5 of the SEI CMM model...

I always thought the CMM model was useful only if implemented properly and the quality culture is developed among employees. Many sw companies in India are successful in obtaining these accreditations but few actually have such quality and culture running in their veins... Many people believe that CMM is very heavy and slows down processes. In fact, during the class break, I had the same argument with Ajay, one of my good friends here... He used to work in Motorola, the inventors of 6 sigma... I do not agree. If implemented with common sense and if followed correctly by the average employee, CMM will work to your advantage. We have seen so many abusive practices due to lack of required knowledge and training in the Indian sw industry that today CMM is being branded as being too process heavy...

I believe that this paper: http://hsb.baylor.edu/ramsower/ais.ac.97/papers/gibson.htm has some interesting thoughts in that it moves towards the quality culture aspect in software companies... Thought it made lot of sense...