Optimum Software Process Improvement Paradigm for Quality...

Optimum Software Process Improvement Paradigm for Quality

Practices in Software Industry

Submitted by Faisal Tehseen Shah

in accordance with the requirement for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

(August 2010)

Supervisor: Dr. Niaz Ahmad

Co-Supervisor: Dr. Shafay Shamail

Institute of Quality and Technology Management Faculty of Engineering and Technology

University of the Punjab Quaid-e-Azam Campus, Lahore-Pakistan

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the dissertation is the original work of the author

and has been carried out under our supervision. We certify that the material

included in this thesis have not been used in part or full in a manuscript

already submitted or in the process of submission in partial / complete

fulfilment of the award of any other degree from University of the Punjab or

any other institution. We also certify that the thesis has been prepared

according to the prescribed format of University of the Punjab and we submit

for its evaluation for the award of Ph.D. degree through the official procedures

of the University of the Punjab.

Prof. Dr. Niaz Ahmad (Supervisor) Ex-Director

Institute of Quality and Technology Management University of the Punjab

Dr. Shafay Shamail (Co-Supervisor)

Department of Computer Science Lahore University of Management Sciences

Abstract Overall behaviour of local software industry towards quality if simply

phrased is, “No Quality Culture”. It is the cause of lower Information

Technology (IT) exports due to non competitive nature of local software

product development practices which are laden with delays, non-

conformances and inconsistency. Local quality culture lacks quality

awareness and is immature in following good quality practices and

implementing quality improvement standards. As a step further in this

direction the objective of this study is to map the actual environment and true

culture of Small and Medium Software Houses (SMSH) towards quality

improvement and process improvement by implementing Total Quality

Management (TQM) philosophy.

It was an exploratory research effort in the domain of Total Quality

Management (TQM) and Software Process Improvement (SPI). The research

begins with literature review of major quality standards implemented in the

local industry. The behaviour of international quality standards was

deliberated towards SMSH. A survey was conducted to evaluate the current

quality practices and develop a process improvement model within the local

SMSH. For this purpose software houses that were members of statutory and

professional organizations such as Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB),

Pakistan Software House Association (PASHA) were selected. Listing of

commercially available directory of RozeePak was also referred. For this

survey the quality constructs and data collection instrument were designed

based on literature review about small and medium enterprises culture and

leading software quality models such as CMM, CMMI, ISO, SPICE and

PSP/TSP. The results of the survey were analyzed and reported to high light

quality problems being faced by SMSH to implement quality.

Study included descriptive as well as empirical analysis. Descriptive

analysis was based on comments via survey and personal interaction while

conducting the survey. The empirical analysis included correlation and

regression analysis of quality constructs. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM)

technique was used to develop an optimized Lean Quality Improvement

Model (LQIM) for standard quality practices in the local software industry.

Eight quality constructs were developed to ascertain the level of current

quality practices in the SMSH and evolve a LQIM. In correlation analysis all

seven independent constructs were found significant towards the dependent

variable Quality Improvement. Regression analysis revealed that only four of

these independent quality constructs contributed significantly towards the

dependant variable Quality Improvement. Through Structural Equation

Modelling (SEM) the LQIM was evolved. This model presented four quality

constructs and ten of their respective quality practices as significant.

LQIM evolved as a tailored and economized paradigm according to

the needs and perceptions of the local IT practitioners. Also LQIM evolved as

an indigenous model which when improvised in accordance to the SMSH

cultural and quality improvement recommendations is proven to be a fit model

for SMSH. The LQIM has already been ratified according to generally

accepted good fit indices in SEM analysis. In order to implement LQIM by

SMSH implementation of Indigenous LQIM was proposed using the Deming’s

philosophy of Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) Cycle for continuous process

improvement. The set of recommendations for SMSH software process

improvement and proposed LQIM paradigm will give the innovative and

flexible directions for SMSH to change their culture and improve their

processes and software quality.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am thankful to

Almighty ALLAH

who has given me the zeal to learn and seek knowledge.

my profound gratitude and regards to my visionary Supervisor for his support

Professor Dr. Niaz Ahmed.

and

my deep appreciation for my Co-Supervisor Dr Shafay Shamail

for his resolute commitment, deep insight and direction during the phase of research and especially his patience to match my pace of learning.

and

I am thankful to my class fellows for their priceless contribution in knowledge sharing especially Dr. Muhammad Usman Awan and Dr. Tajamal Hussain

and

my gratitude towards my colleagues for unprecedented support and motivation especially

Mansoor Shiraz and Muhammad Irfan

and

my thanks to young students who assisted me in conducting initial research during pilot studies especially

M. Shafique Khan (Late), and Faiza Dar

and

most importantly thanks to my wife and kids for their patience and sacrifice of their time that I consumed for this research.

CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................................................ i

LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................................ iv

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................................................... v

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1

1.1. PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH ..................................................................................... 2

1.2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS .............................................................................................. 4

1.3. BACKGROUND OF PAKISTAN SOFTWARE INDUSTRY ............................................... 5

1.4. BUILDING BLOCKS OF PAKISTAN SOFTWARE INDUSTRY ......................................... 6

1.5. ROLE OF MINISTRY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY IN IT SECTOR .............................. 8

1.6. PAKISTAN’S INITIATIVES FOR QUALITY ENHANCEMENT IN IT SECTOR ................... 9

1.7. QUALITY PERCEPTION PROBLEMS IN PAKISTAN IT INDUSTRY .............................. 10

1.8. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE ........................................................................................ 11

1.9. STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ..................................................................................... 13

1.10. SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 15

CHAPTER 2 QUALITY IN SME ................................................................................................................... 16

2. QUALITY ....................................................................................................................... 16

2.1. Quality of Design (QoD) . ........................................................................................ 19

2.2. Quality of Conformance (QoC) ................................................................................ 19

2.3. Quality of Performance (QoP) ................................................................................ 20

2.4. IMPORTANCE OF TQM IN AN ORGANIZATION ....................................................... 22

2.4.1. CUSTOMER ORIENTATION WITH TQM ............................................................... 23

2.4.2. TOP MANAGEMENT COMMITMENT ................................................................... 23

2.5. SME QUALITY CULTURE .......................................................................................... 24

2.6. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT ........................................................................................ 27

2.7. SUMMARY ............................................................................................................... 30

CHAPTER 3 QUALITY MODELS ............................................................................................................... 32

3.1 SOFTWARE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT MODELS ................................................. 35

3.1 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ORGANIZATION (ISO9001:2000) ......................... 36

3.1.1 ISO 9000 STRENGHTS ...................................................................................... 39

3.1.2 ISO 9000 WEAKNESSES .................................................................................... 40

3.2 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL .......................................................................... 41

3.2.1 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL AND SME ...................................................... 43

3.3 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL INTEGRATION .................................................. 45

3.3.1 CMMI STAGED AND CONTINUOUS ................................................................. 46

3.3.2 CMMI STAGED MATURITY LEVELS .................................................................. 48

3.3.3 CMMI CAPABILITY LEVELS FOR CONTINEOUS REPRESENTATION.................. 50

3.3.4 CMMI LIMITATIONS......................................................................................... 51

3.3.5 CMMI STRENGTHS ........................................................................................... 52

3.3.6 CMMI WEAKNESS ............................................................................................ 52

3.4 SOFTWARE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT & CAPABILITY DETERMINATION (SPICE) 53

3.4.1 STRENGTHS OF SPICE ...................................................................................... 58

3.4.2 WEAKNESSES OF SPICE .................................................................................... 59

3.5 PERSONAL SOFTWARE PROCESS ........................................................................ 60

3.6 TEAM SOFTWARE PROCESS ................................................................................ 61

3.7 Six Sigma .............................................................................................................. 62

3.8 BRIEF COMPARISON SOFTWARE QUALITY STANDARDS .................................... 64

3.8.1 ISO and CMM ................................................................................................... 64

3.8.2 CMM AND CMMI ............................................................................................. 65

3.8.3 ISO AND CMMI ................................................................................................ 66

3.8.4 SPICE AND CMM .............................................................................................. 67

3.9 PERFORMANCE OF PROCESS IMPROVEMENT MODELS IN SME ........................ 68

3.9.1 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL (CMM) AND SME ......................................... 68

3.9.2 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL INTEGRATION IN SME.................................. 70

3.9.3 INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS ORGANIZATION (ISO) IN SME ........................ 72

3.9.4 SUMMARY ....................................................................................................... 73

CHAPTER 4 METHODOLOGY.................................................................................................................... 76

4.1 RESEARCH DESIGN AND QUESTIONNAIRE ............................................................. 76

4.1 TESTING AND DEBUGGING‐PILOT STUDY ............................................................... 77

4.2 INDICATORS ............................................................................................................. 77

4.3 QUALITY CONSTRUCTS ............................................................................................ 77

4.4 RELIABILITY .............................................................................................................. 79

4.5 THEORATICAL FRAMEWORK FOR DEPENDENT VARIABLE ..................................... 79

4.6 SURVEY ADMINISTRATION ..................................................................................... 80

4.6.1 SAMPLING PROCEDURE .................................................................................. 80

4.6.2 POPULATI ON SAMPLE .................................................................................... 81

4.6.3 SAMPLE SIZE DETERMINATION ....................................................................... 82

4.7 DATA ANALYSIS ................................................................................................... 82

4.8 STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING ..................................................................... 83

4.9 SUMMARY ............................................................................................................... 85

CHAPTER 5 DISCRIPTIVE RESULTS ............................................................................................... 86

5.1 FREQUENCY ANALYSIS ............................................................................................ 86

5.8 ORGANIZATION SIZE & STRUCTURE ....................................................................... 87

5.9 ORGANIZATION CULTURE ....................................................................................... 88

5.10 ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS QUALITY ................................................. 89

5.11 REQUIREMENT DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT ............................................ 90

5.12 PLANNING ................................................................................................................ 91

5.13 MONITORING AND CONTROL ................................................................................. 92

5.14 MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS.............................................................................. 93

5.15 PROCESS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT ........................................................................ 94

5.16 QUALITY MODELS PRACTICED IN LOCAL IT INDUSTRY........................................... 95

5.17 RESPONDENT PROFILES........................................................................................... 95

5.18 PROBLEMS AND ISSUES RAISED .............................................................................. 96

5.19 PROBLEMS IN IMPLEMENTATION OF QMS IN PAKISTAN’S IT INDUSTRY ............. 99

5.20 SUMMARY ............................................................................................................. 100

CHAPTER 6 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ...................................................................................... 101

6.1 RELIABILITY ANALYSIS ........................................................................................... 101

6.2 INTERNAL VALIDITY CONSTRUCTS ........................................................................ 103

6.3 EXTERNAL VALIDITY .............................................................................................. 104

6.4 CORRELATION ANALYSIS ....................................................................................... 105

6.5 REGRESSION ANALYSIS ......................................................................................... 106

6.6 STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING ............................................................... 109

6.6.1 SEM IMPLEMENTATION ................................................................................ 109

6.6.2 RATIO OF CHI‐SQUARE : /D.F ................................................................... 110

6.6.3 COMPARATIVE FIT INDEX (CFI) ..................................................................... 111

6.6.3.1 NORMED FIT INDEX (NFI) .............................................................................. 111

6.6.3.2 GOODNESS‐0F‐FIT INDEX (GFI) ..................................................................... 112

6.6.4 ROOT MEAN SQUARE ERROR INDEX (RMSEA) ............................................. 112

6.7 Lean Quality Improvement model conceptual detail ...................................... 116

6.8 SUMMARY ......................................................................................................... 118

CHAPTER 7 RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................................................... 119

7.1 QUESTION 1: HOW TO CHANGE ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN SMSH ............ 119

7.2 RECOMMENDATIONS ON FINDINGS SMSH ...................................................... 121

7.2.1 ORGANIZATION SIZE & STRUCTURE ............................................................. 121

7.2.2. ORGANIZATION CULTURE ............................................................................. 121

7.2.3. ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS QUALITY ....................................... 122

7.2.4. REQUIREMENT DEVELOPMENT & MANAGEMENT ...................................... 122

7.2.5. RECOMMENDATIONS: PROJECT PLANNING ................................................. 123

7.2.6. MONITORING AND CONTROL ....................................................................... 124

7.2.7. MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS .................................................................... 125

7.2.8. PROCESS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT .............................................................. 125

7.3. LQIM (PARADIGM) FOR LOCAL SMSH .............................................................. 126

7.3.1. Lean Quality improvement model deployment plan ................................... 127

7.3.2. TQM SUGGESTIONS AND GUIDELINES.......................................................... 130

7.3.3. LIMITATIONS OF PROPOSED LQIM PARADIGM ........................................... 131

7.3.4. SUMMARY ..................................................................................................... 132

CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK ................................................................... 133

Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................... 135

APPENDIX A – COVER LETTER .............................................................................................................. 145

Optimum Software Process Improvement Paradigm for Quality Practices in Software Industry ......................................................................................................................................... 145

APPENDIX B – QUESTIONNAIRE ........................................................................................................... 147

APPENDIX C QUESTIONNAIRE INDICATORS .............................................................................. 151

APPENDIX D INDICATORS & MAPPING ISO 9000.................................................................... 157

i

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ACM Association for Computing Machinery

AMOS Analytical Movement of Structures

ANOVA Analysis of variance

BPR Business Process Re-Engineering

BSI British Standard Institute

CFA Confirmatory Factor Analysis

CFI Comparative fit index

CMM Capability Maturity Model

CMMI Capability Maturity Model Integration

CPI Continuous Process Improvement

CPI Capability process Index

CPI Continuous Process Improvement

CRM Customer Relationship Management

CUS Customer Supplier

DCS Data Collection System

FFRDC Federally Funded Research and Development Centre

GFI Goodness-0f-fit Index

GQM Goal Question Matrix

HQC High Quality software creation support virtual Centre

ICT Information & Communication Technology

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

ISO International Standard Organization

KBL Knowledge Base Library

KM Knowledge Management

KPAs Key Process Areas

LQIM Lean Quality Improvement Model

MAN Management

MAN Measurement & Analysis

NFI Normed Fit Index

OBQ Organization Behaviour Towards Quality

OBQ Behaviour Towards Quality

OCL Organizational Culture

ORG Organization

ii

OSS Organization Size & Structure

PA Process Attributes

PASHA Pakistan Software House Association

PDP Project development plan

PITB Punjab Information Technology Board

PMC Project Monitoring Tracking

PMC Monitoring and Control

PPL Project Planning

PQI Process / Quality Improvement

PQM Product Quality Management

PSEB Pakistan Software Export Board

PSP Personal Process Software

QA Quality Assurance

QC Quality Control

QFD Quality Function Deployment

QMPs Quality Management Principles

QMS Quality Management System

QoC Quality of Conformance

QoD Quality of Design

QoP Quality of Performance

RDM Requirement Development Management

RMSEA Root Mean Square Error Index

ROI Return on Investment

SCAMPI Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement

SCM Software Configuration Management

SDLC Software Development Life Cycle

SEI Software Engineering Institute

SEM Structural Equation Modelling

SME Small and Medium Enterprises

SMEs Small and Medium Enterprises

SMSHs Small and Medium Software Houses

SPI Software Process Improvement

SPICE Software Process Improvement Determination

SQM Software Quality Management

SUP Support

SW-CMM Software Capability Maturity Model

iii

TQC Total quality control

TQM Total Quality Management

TSP Team Software Process

VSEs Very Small Enterprises

WHO World Health Organization

iv

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS........................................................................................... 14 FIGURE 2 EVOLUTION QUAGMIRE OF QUALITY MODELS ..................................................... 34 FIGURE 3 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KEY SC7 STANDARDS ............................................... 37 FIGURE 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ......................................................................................... 80 FIGURE 5 THEORATICAL STRUCTURAL MODELING ............................................................... 84 FIGURE 6 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT DEPENDENCY MODEL ............................................. 108 FIGURE 7 SEM STANDARDIZED SOLUTION FOR SPI MODEL FIT. .................................. 113 FIGURE 8 IMPLEMENTATION OF LQIM MODEL ...................................................................... 127

v

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1 Structure of Quality Models .................................................................................................. 36 TABLE 2 OVERVIEW OF SPICE CAPABILITY LEVELS .................................................................. 57 TABLE 3 PSP Process Hierarchy ............................................................................................................ 61 TABLE 4 Structure of TSP ........................................................................................................................ 63 TABLE 5 CONSTRUCTS TABLE ............................................................................................................... 78 TABLE 6 ORGANIZATION SIZE & STRUCTURE ............................................................................... 87 TABLE 7 ORGANIZATION CULTURE .................................................................................................... 88 TABLE 8 ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS QUALITY .................................................. 89 TABLE 9 REQUIREMENT DEVELOPMENT & MANAGEMENT ................................................. 90 TABLE 10 PROJECT PLANNING............................................................................................................ 91 TABLE 11 PROJECT MONITORING TOOL ........................................................................................ 92 TABLE 12 MEASUREMENT & ANALYSIS ......................................................................................... 93 TABLE 13 PROCESS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT ............................................................................ 94 TABLE 14 QUALITY MODEL DEMOGRAPHICS .............................................................................. 95 TABLE 15 RESPONDENT’S PROFILE GROUPS .............................................................................. 96 TABLE 16 RELIABILITY OF CONSTRUCTS ................................................................................... 103 TABLE 17 RELIABILITY STATISTICS .............................................................................................. 103 TABLE 18 CORRELATION BETWEEN ALL CONSTRUCTS ..................................................... 105 TABLE 19 MODEL SUMMARY ............................................................................................................ 106 TABLE 20 ANOVA .................................................................................................................................... 107 TABLE 21 COEFFICIENTS .................................................................................................................... 107 TABLE 22 CMIN CHI‐SQUARE ............................................................................................................ 110 TABLE 23 BASELINE COMPARISONS MODEL FIT INDICES ................................................ 111 TABLE 24 RMSEA ..................................................................................................................................... 112 TABLE 25 EVOLVED SPI PARADIGM PRACTICES ..................................................................... 114 TABLE 26 SEM DELETED ITEMS FROM MODEL ....................................................................... 114 TABLE 27 LQIM CONCEPTUAL DETAIL ........................................................................................ 116 TABLE 28 LQIM DEPLOYMENT PLAN MAPPED WITH PDCA ............................................. 129

Chapter 1 Introduction

1

CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION

This Chapter starts with introduction and background to the software

quality improvement in the Pakistan’s software industry, and highlights the

efforts made by Government of Pakistan to promote Information Technology

(IT) industry. After that research questions are mentioned to support the

research objectives of the study. Following that role of government and IT

statuary bodies in developing IT sector of Pakistan is discussed. In the end

significance and structure of research are referred to develop further

understanding into this research.

After studying quality gurus like Joseph M. Juran who is considered to

be the pioneering authority in Quality Management1; Dr. Edward Deming who

is considered by many as father of quality2 and Crosby known for his book,

“Quality without tears” and his overall philosophy, “Quality is through

prevention and conformance to customer’s requirements only” (Sharon and

Shyrel, 1998). It was finally learnt that Quality was all about customer

satisfaction on one side and mindset change, prevention and culture change

on the other side, which is all cloaked in the phrase ” Total Quality

management” (TQM). As concept of quality claimed by Juran (1988) and

Crosby (1979 ) that “Quality is free”, is indeed the concept that the local

industry failed to apprehend where savings in rework cost are much more

than the amount invested in prevention costs. On the contrary trend showed

that companies only practiced quality when it is affordable or convenient to

the top management. It is realized that very little work has been done in the

area of TQM implementation in the local software industry, and also in the

third world developing countries. The study is to investigate local (Pakistani)

software industry quality practices in the Small and Medium Software Houses

(SMSH) in the light of TQM philosophy and benchmarking the world best

1 “Quality is planned; Product quality does not happen by accident; Quality product is fitness for use and free from deficiencies. (M. Juran, 1988)

2 Deming’s teachings mainly revolve around PDCA Cycle and Deming’s 14 principles that bought industrial revolution in Japan and Japan became the market leader in 1950s. Deming preached statistical quality control and emphasized that quality is management’s responsibility. (E. Deming, 1986) as cited by (Sharon, Sheryl, 1998)


2

quality practices for quality and process improvement. This chapter introduces

the problem, objectives and purpose of carrying out the research and benefits

and significance of the research. At the end of the chapter research

framework is explained with the help of a diagram.

1.1. PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH

The software industry has become the backbone of a country’s

economic growth and prosperity and due to its nature of dealing, networking

and one to one linkage directly with foreign companies; it opens a virtual

corridor to develop industrial liaison and business linkages in the global

market. This research area deals with past and present state of software

industry in Pakistan and behaviour of software industries towards software

quality, Total Quality Management (TQM) and Continuous Process

Improvement (CPI) and above all Quality Improvement.

The main purpose of this study is to determine the level of quality

practices understood and implemented by the practitioners in Pakistan’s

software industry. The objective is to find out whether bear minimum quality

standards are being practiced. It does not matter which international standard

is being adopted by an organization, but it is important to find out if the quality

practices and processes are practically followed. If an organization utilizes its

stated standard spiritually then its product quality and product effectiveness

will match with that of software products produced at international level. The

cause of lower export rate of Pakistan software industry is the lack of

awareness with quality standards. The government of Pakistan is subsidizing

Information Technology companies to get certifications for ISO 9001 and

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) as reported on Pakistan

Software Export Board (PSEB) official website (PSEB, 2010). As a step

further in this direction the objective is to map the actual environment and true

culture of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) towards quality improvement,

process improvement, and Continuous Process Improvement (CPI). It is an

exploratory research effort in the domain of Total Quality Management (TQM)

and SPI. A statistical industrial survey is conducted among the houses of the

local Industry. Mainly software houses which are members of Pakistan


3

Software Export Board (PSEB), Pakistan Software House Association

(PASHA) and SMSH in the major cities of Pakistan are targeted as population

sample for this study. A feedback from this survey will give a set of concrete

discrepancies between true SME culture and required culture of international

standards like CMM, CMMI, Software Process Improvement Determination

(SPICE) and ISO.

After identifying characteristics of a true SME culture, a set of guidelines

and a process improvement paradigm for SME is to be developed, which is

the basic purpose of this research. The set of guidelines for SME software

process improvement paradigm will give the innovative and flexible directions

for SMSH to change their culture and improve their processes and quality.

The aim is that organizations of all sizes especially of small size are able to

implement it for the improvement of their product and process quality.

Guidelines to change mindset of the employees and top management and

hence apply TQM philosophy to implement quality improvement and

measurement culture are proposed. Such guidelines will enable small and

medium sized software houses to build optimum quality culture and maintain

a beer minimum level of quality that will lead SMSH to become competitive,

as well as quality organizations through continuous process improvement. In

order to fully comprehend the aims and objectives of this research it will be

important to mention the research questions developed on the basis of

situation analysis. This situation analysis is based on critical analysis and

comprehensive literature review presented in Chapter-2 and Chapter3. In the

following section research questions are given that evolved during the

research design and questionnaire development phase as an output of pilot

study.


4

1.2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The research questions that evolved after the situation analysis and

pilot study to further highlight and support the research objective are the

following.

1. What is quality and concept of quality culture and process

improvement in the Small and Medium Software Houses (SMSH)?

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) culture can be referred to as

behaviour of immaturity of SME towards software development that results in

threats for SME performance. SME culture concept becomes a vital issue in

the Performance of local markets especially in context of quality culture. A

detailed discussion is in Chapter-2.

2. What are the different types of leading models of Software

Process Improvement (SPI) being practiced world wide as best

practices to improve software quality?

These are the different types of leading software process models and

process management models being practiced locally and globally as best

practices in software quality improvement. These models comprise of ISO

9001, CMM, CMMI, SPICE, PSP and TSP. Detail discussion about these

models is given in Chapter-3.

3. What are the problems and issues faced by local IT practitioners

to implement quality for Software Process Improvement (SPI)?

There are many issues and constraints that local SMEs are facing in

the local industry. The attitude of the top mangers is more towards producing

bulk of code and making money and less towards solving quality issues at

work place. Some of the problems faced by the practitioners as found in the

survey and literature review are given in Chapter-2 and Chapter-5

4. What can be a proposed Software Process Improvement (SPI)

paradigm which can best fit to solve the problems of quality


5

improvement in the local Small and Medium Software houses

(SMSH)?

The proposed Optimum Software Quality Improvement Model and a

set of guidelines for software quality improvement for Small and Medium Size

Software Houses (SMSH) are reported in the chapter-7. These guidelines

are derived from the Results of descriptive analysis chapter – 5 and proposed

SPI model through Structured Equation Modelling (SEM) in chapter 6.

1.3. BACKGROUND OF PAKISTAN SOFTWARE INDUSTRY

When a brief look is taken on the Pakistan’s software/IT industry, it is

observed that local software industry has shown a very uneven pattern of

growth through its very short history. Before early nineties the Government of

Pakistan (GOP) showed a cold stance toward the Information Technology and

software industry. The IT industry was not in the GOP priorities though

software houses have existed in the country since 1970’s. From early-to-mid

1990’s, it has been stated that the IT industry is promoted and supported by

the government. It started getting attention when the software industry of the

developing countries started to groom and rose to prominence. Since then

several policy actions and infrastructure development and up-gradation

projects have been undertaken by the GOP to promote not only the local

software industry but also to export the software from Pakistan. Many national

IT policies along with their action plans are documented according to the

Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST). Our local software industry

needs a face lift and deliberation in policy making as our local software

houses do not show the kind of vitality and growth as that is expected by

contemporary software houses of international repute. To export the quality

software where there is a strong competition across the globe. IN order to

improve Pakistan has to be aware of the importance of development of local

IT industry (Osama, 2005).

There are many reasons for the poor quality of IT business in the

country. For instance there is a brain drain hence Pakistan looses to take

advantage of those qualified professionals. There is a lack of entrepreneurial

skills and managerial know-how of IT professionals. IT industry faces serious


6

problems in securing financing and credit. Unwillingness of local business

managers to pay appropriate prices for locally developed software (Salim,

2001) is another cause of poor growth of local software market. Beside all the

problems and threats faced there still are many opportunities in grooming the

software industry of Pakistan. PSEB is willing to provide all possible help to

facilitate setting up of Call Centres. The global and domestic Internet

explosion helps a lot in worldwide growth not only in communication

infrastructure but also in distance learning and education. Also the customer

awareness and empowerment has increased through IT and Internet. PSEB

and Pakistan National Accreditation Council (PNAC) have extensively trained

and developed personal of software houses through their quality improvement

trainings and certification trainings, but a lot more effort in this direction is

desirable.

1.4. BUILDING BLOCKS OF PAKISTAN SOFTWARE INDUSTRY

The building blocks of IT industry in Pakistan are Pakistan Council for

Science & Technology (PCST), National Commission for Science &

Technology (NCST), Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB), and Pakistan

Software Houses Association (PASHA), such organizations are the major hub

of activity and are taking steps to improve local software industry to make it a

candidate in the global software industry.

PASHA is an association to promote the software industry in Pakistan

and to protect the rights of its members. There were nine software houses

that formed PASHA in the last quarter of 1992. By 2007 it has grown to a

membership of over 350 software houses. The efforts of PASHA have

resulted in the formation of IT Policy and Action Plan of the government. The

guiding theme for the IT Policy is that “the government shall be the facilitator

and enabler to encourage the private sector to drive the development in IT

and telecommunications”. The government IT Policy covers the development

of human resource, IT infrastructure, software and hardware development

(PASHA, 2010).

Pakistan local software industry growth has been sluggish due to slow

development of supportive policies towards IT and local software houses in


7

last 3 decades by the GOP. For most of the 1990s, Government's policies

towards the IT Industry were a little misaligned and did not match the direction

and needs of local software houses. The hype of the IT global bubble also

affected Pakistan like other developing countries and it was believed that "all

you need is a computer and an Internet connection" to join the race (Osama,

2005). Similarly capacity building and creation of new jobs was also slow. It

was not until 2005 that GOP finally launched Digital Electronic Government

Directorate (DEGD) which gave a boost to local IT industry by creating mega

projects like E-government Portal, NADRA, and the web portals and web sites

of 34 Ministries/Divisions developed in 2002.

According to PSEB presently there are at least 1763 active IT

companies registered with PSEB in Pakistan with around 611 active

companies in Karachi, 544 in Lahore and around 479 in Islamabad. These IT

companies specialise in the domains of software development, networking,

printing, multimedia, call centres and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).

Growth in these major cities has been three fold over the last five years.

PSEB reported the size of local market U.S. $2.6 billion and IT enabled

exports registered at State Bank of Pakistan raised to $1.6 billion (PSEB,

2010).

Since 2007, The IT sector has got greater attention from the GOP. The

National Commission for Science and Technology (NCST) is the top decision

making body that provides directions to the scientific and technological

development of the nation through the office of the Pakistan Council for

Science and Technology (PCST). The focus of NCST is on the acceleration of

scientific and technological capacity building for rapid and sustainable

economic growth. PCST is responsible to ensure proper linkage between

science and technology and production sector in the local industry. During the

years 2006-2007 PCST has scheduled to launch of more than 300 projects for

the development of science and technology in general and for the promotion

of information technology in particular. This represents a major step forward

towards building an indigenous science and technology capacity and a

knowledge-based economy in Pakistan (PCST, 2010). According to PCST in

the private sector Worldcall, Wateen Telecom and Micro Broad Band have


8

also laid down their fibre Optic networks in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. A

fully integrated international standard fibre optic & fibre optic cable

manufacturing facility is also functioning in Pakistan and second new foreign

investments are expected in this sector too. Pakistan is still thinking to go to

T1 bandwidth connectivity (Sulkani, 2007).

1.5. ROLE OF MINISTRY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY IN IT

SECTOR

The Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), GOP has been taking

key measures to encourage Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the country.

The aim is to make the proposition financially attractive and simplify the FDI

process to open up the opportunities in Pakistan's IT sector. In this regard,

several policy measures have been taken that include for example Ministry of

Science & Technology National IT Policy and Action Plan (MoST, 2000 ).

Pakistan Educational Research Network (PERN) by Higher education

Commission (HEC) is established to enable sharing, among educational

institutions, global digital libraries of teaching and learning materials and to

promote faculty research collaboration among local and international

educational institutions. Special concessions like lower bandwidth rates for

universities, educational institutions, software exporters and Internet Service

Providers (ISP) are part of the package.

A few of the policy inducement laid down in the IT Policy include Income Tax

holiday for IT companies and IT Professionals. Along with that software

exporting companies are allowed to retain 35% of their earnings in foreign

currency accounts. Educational grants for scholarships and enhancement of

IT infrastructure in the public sector universities have been provided. Initially

import duty on computers and parts was exempted which is again reverted to

15% in 2009. National Computing Education Accreditation Council (NCEAC)

was also established to ensure quality of training and IT education provided

by the training institutes and Higher Education Institutions (HEI) (NCEAC,

2010). Higher Education Commission (HEC) also made available foreign

expatriate faculty to improve the quality of faculty and students (MoST, 2000).


9

The Pakistan Technology Board (PTB) was established with the

Minister for Science and Technology as its head to appraise technology

needs and view national and international trade and technology implications

(PTB, 2010). PTB advises technology transfer and fosters the public/private

partnership in commercializing locally developed technologies. Provincial IT

Boards established to ensure quality IT education, strengthen IT educational

institutions, develop databases, and build capacity in IT job markets and also

to establish linkages with industry. In addition it will provide services to Small

and Medium Enterprises (SME) for training, product development,

consultancy and quality improvement (MoST, 2000).

The Pakistan National Accreditation Council (PNAC) accredits

agencies providing certification of ISO-9000 and ISO-14000 standards,

laboratories for testing and calibration, and register’s auditors and offers

training courses in the area of quality control. So far 3000 Pakistani firms have

acquired ISO 9000 certification under this program (PNAC, 2010 ).

1.6. PAKISTAN’S INITIATIVES FOR QUALITY ENHANCEMENT IN IT

SECTOR

In 2002, Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) came up with a

quality enhancement plan for IT Sector of Pakistan. ISO 9001:2000 (now

revised ISO 9001:2008) had international acceptability in 165 countries

including western countries who would want to invest in Pakistan. PSEB

offered selected 80 IT Companies from all over Pakistan a packaged deal

where each company was to receive a full consultancy service from selected

and reputed ISO 9001 consultancy firms, and get certified by an authentic and

reliable certification body. The certification program was supposed to provide

much needed boost to the IT market and grab attention of western market

once again. The response to this step by PSEB was so overwhelming, that

their financial limit was increased by the Government to support 20 more

companies, making a total of 100 IT companies.

A full detail of the project plan of PSEB and the total 100 companies

(all of which were certified successfully) can be found at PSEB official website

(PSEB, 2010). Currently there are number of consultants and certification


10

bodies available for ISO 9001. By 2004, ISO 9001 had become quite

affordable and many software houses achieved certification. A detail about

software houses in Pakistan can be viewed at official site of Pakistan

Software Houses Association (PASHA, 2010)..

PSEB introduced another plan especially for software development

companies for achievement of CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration)

certification. This is still one of the most expensive and difficult certifications,

so very few organizations have been able to invest in it. Under the sponsored

programs of PSEB, by the end of 2007, Pakistan was expected to have 20

CMMI assessed IT companies as predicted by. (Sulkani, 2007). As per latest

statistics from PSEB there are only two CMMI maturity level 5 companies, 3

CMMI maturity level 3 software houses and 16 CMMI maturity level 2

assessed software houses. (PSEB, 2010). Apart from that PSEB has more

than 110 ISO 9000 certified companies. Most of the organizations supported

by PSEB for achievement of a CMMI maturity level, have achieved CMMI

maturity level-2 through self-help and internal consultants.

1.7. QUALITY PERCEPTION PROBLEMS IN PAKISTAN IT INDUSTRY

Most of the IT Companies in Pakistan are generally facing quality

awareness problems that lead to slow growth in quality adaptation and non-

adoptability of quality models and standard practices specifically in quality

improvement. During a personal interview and discussion on local quality

practices with Haroon3 who is consultant for implementing ISO 9000 in SMEs

and SMSH in local industry, a few of the problems that he had experienced

during ISO 9000 certification are mentioned below.

1. Pirated Applications: Pirated applications do not come with any updates

or support from the original vendor. The high cost of original application

software discourages the management from buying original software

applications and therefore many problems faced during application

3 Faisal Haroon, QA Consultant for Quality Management System ISO 9000. www.qmsiso.com


11

execution remain unanswered due to no support by the manufacturer /

vendor.

2. Expansive Quality Assurance Tools: Human labour force may be very

cheap in Pakistan, but even they need to use additional tools to bring out

better results. There are many quality assurance and quality testing

utilities available but the management avoids their cost (although one time

only) and prefers to deal with problems if caught by client.

3. Unclear Objectives: Management is not clear about the benefits behind

the achievement of certification. Management considers quality as an over

head and it is not ready to accept quality’s prevalent gains and in the form

reduced rework and product costs. They fail to realize that quality

certification cannot provide instant results as it is a continuous activity and

requires corrective and preventive actions even after the development,

implementation and certification process had ended.

4. Rework: Many organizations do not consider cost of re-work. Many

problems are ignored as the cost of a first time occurrence may be very

low. No one considers the cost of reoccurrence and its effects on

performance and the software development process.

5. Certification: ISO is not the only solution. The certification has turned into

a race, and everyone wants a certificate without much of an effort, leading

to many certification processes as baseless as the primary objective has

turned into a market perception value rather than utilization of quality

process and taking its full advantage. The full advantage costs a lot more

than mere certification process as the organization has to go through all

requirements, whereas certification can be achieved with minimum

requirements and some documentary evidence of performance.

1.8. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE

This research will help to develop an optimum Software Process

Improvement (SPI) Model to implement quality standard practices, which

would be tailored for the Pakistani Software Industry. In addition to this new

quality improvement suggestions will be made in the form of guidelines.


12

These guidelines will act as a quality improvement paradigm for the

practitioners of IT. Policy makers like MOS&T and PSEB can also benefit from

these for their future policy and planning in the sustainability of IT sector.

Quality Improvement Guidelines would then be used by the software houses

to determine their maturity level and quality level, devised through this

research. The set of guidelines and quality implementation factors are

suggested on the basis of best practices from literature review findings from

survey through research questionnaire.

Majority of the Pakistani software industry does not have even the

basic knowledge about quality, so then expecting them to implement quality

standards like ISO 9001:2000 or CMMI in totality is not right. In addition to the

existing software houses, new IT companies keep on sprouting up

intermittently. These new companies on most occasions are not financially

sound enough to invest in quality implementation procedure. For them

survival is a key in a cut throat market, where multiple companies vie for a

single project. These companies are the candidates of the quality standard

proposed in this research. It would help them in a multi faceted manner, first

they would have enough quality procedures to compete in the market in a

more viable manner, second quality would become part of their culture, since

implementing the proposed optimum quality standard is not expected to have

as much effort and hence monetary resources, as their more eloquent

counterparts. After the company becomes comfortable with quality procedures

and their financial standings improve, they can move ahead with

implementing complete international standard of their choice.

The increase in quality awareness and practices in the local industry

will make local software products more competitive in price and quality in the

international markets and hence will result in the increase of market share of

Pakistan software products in the international software markets. Local

software industry is expected to find a new direction and a new vision for the

quality improvement. The quality of the software products will be improved. It

will result in reducing software product development costs, increase in product

quality and hence it will make Pakistan software products more competitive

and attractive in the international market. Ultimately, as a final outcome by


13

adopting such guidelines and practices and measurement culture, the quality

culture and quality of process management in local software industry will

hopefully improve.

1.9. STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS

According the research framework as shown in figure 1, the research

begins with literature review. Literature review will help in finding world’s

trends and cultures about quality and process improvement. It also provides

brief and in-depth understanding with international quality models.

Literature review will aid in finding out some concrete answers to the

following questions like: What is quality and quality culture? What are the

conditions and requirements to achieve quality in processes and product

development? What are the most widely used international quality standard

practices and models? How do international standard practices deal with

SME?

The next phase in this research framework is knowing about the local

SMEs. Local SME research has two dimensions: SME structure and SME

environment. The SME structure helps us to identify the structure and size of

Pakistani software houses. The SME environment would aid in finding true

quality culture of Pakistani software industry. The research structure is given

in FIGURE 1.

Further, the issues in implementing quality improvement practices in

the local industry are first identified with respect to culture of SMEs and

requirement of leading quality standards, then through analysis and

discussion new guidelines will be suggested for quality improvement. For

statistical analysis a survey is conducted for data collection in the local

software industry. Findings of the survey are tabulated and analyzed to depict

the level of quality practices. At the end on the basis of Structural Equation

Modelling (SEM) analysis a new SPI Model is proposed as final outcome.

The thesis report is structured as follows. Chapter 1 briefly introduces

local government’s efforts to promote IT sector and then research questions

are developed to support research objective. In the end research significance


14

and structure are narrated to give deeper understanding of this study. Chapter

2 addresses the question about quality and concept of quality culture and

process improvement in Small and Medium Software Houses (SMSH).

Chapter 3 looks at different types of leading quality models that are

practiced in the local software industry mainly ISO 9000, CMM, CMMI,

SPICE, PSP and TSP. In a way, chapter-2 is also linked with Chapter-3 in a

contextual manner that process reengineering and tailoring of existing models

should be done to develop new guidelines and optimum practices for local

software industry. The review includes the nature of process improvement

practices adopted by the organizations.

Chapter 4 presents the research methodology adopted in this research

and explains the research including Research Design, questionnaire and

survey administration.

Chapter 5 presents the results of the survey which are reported with

the help of descriptive analysis done by using statistical tool SPSS v 1.6.

In chapter 6 the results of the survey are analysed and a new paradigm

for Software Process Improvement to address the problem of quality

improvement through establishing quality culture is proposed.

Chapter 7 presents recommendations to establish the quality culture in

the local SMSH. . In the end optimum Software Quality Improvement Model

(SQIM) for local software houses (SMSH) is proposed. Chapter 8 concludes

the thesis report.

FIGURE 1 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS


15

1.10. SUMMARY

The Chapter starts from introduction and background to the Software Quality

improvement in the Pakistan Software Industry, and highlights the efforts

made by Government of Pakistan to promote IT industry. Research questions

for the study are given which evolved during the pilot study and detailed

situation analysis. The main purpose of this study is to determine the level of

quality practices understood and implemented by the practitioners in

Pakistan’s software industry. The objective is to find out whether bear

minimum quality standards are being practiced by the local IT practitioners.

The research significance is to develop an optimum Software Quality

Improvement Model (SQIM) to implement quality standard practices, which

would be tailored for the Pakistani Software Industry. In addition to this new

quality improvement suggestions will be made in the form of guidelines.

Government Policy makers like MOS&T and PSEB can also benefit from

these for their future policy and planning in the sustainability of IT sector. In

the end chapter wise structure of the thesis is discussed. Next chapter

provides literature review on Quality and SME quality practices as per

research question 1.

Chapter 2 Quality in SME

16

CHAPTER 2- QUALITY IN SME

This section addresses the question-1 of research by first emphasizing

on importance of quality and defining quality as a discipline by giving its

different definitions and conceptual understanding cited by different

authors. Then further quality is explored by defining its relative

understanding with respect to Quality of Design, Quality of Conformance,

Quality of Performance, Quality Control and Quality Assurance. After

giving complete understanding of quality its application through the

philosophy of Total Quality Management is explained to implement total

quality practices. In the next section quality culture and its implications with

respect to SMSH culture are explored. In the end global software process

improvement practices to improve quality are reviewed to give the real

understanding of SPI with respect to SME quality practices and culture.

Further SPI guidelines developed through gap analysis for local SME are

also presented.

The following section pertains to first research question.

Question: 1. What is quality and concept of quality culture and process improvement in the Small and Medium Software Houses

(SMSH)?

2. QUALITY

The word ‘quality’ is the absolute measure of ‘goodness’. The concept of

quality differs from person to person. So if an organization wants to deliver a

quality product and service, it has to understand what would be considered as

quality by its customers. Basically the quality lies in the eyes of the beholder.

What may be high quality for one customer may not be high quality for

another customer.

According to ISO 9000-2000 “quality is a relative term and is relative to

specific product requirements. “Quality: degree to which a set of inherent

characteristics fulfils requirements” where quality can be used with

adjectives excellent, good or poor and Requirement: means, “need or


17

expectation that is stated, or generally applied “(American Society for

Quality, 2000).

According to ANSI/ASQ Standard A-3 1987, quality is defined as

“Quality is the totality of features and characteristics bear on its

ability to satisfy implied or stated needs”. (praxiom, 2010)

According to British Standard Institute (BSI) quality is defined as

“The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs” (BSI, 1991, as

cited by Sambrook, et al, 2001).

IEEE defines quality in its IEEE Std 610.12-1990 as: (Kishore and Naik,

2003).

“The degree to which a system, component or process meets

specified requirements. The degree to which a system, component or

process meets customer or user needs or expectations”.

Another formal definition of quality given by Crosby (1979) that

“Quality is conformance to requirements or specifications”, who also

suggests that to manage quality adequately, we must be able to measure it.

A traditional industrial concept of Quality was given by Juran (2004) that

states, “Quality is necessary measurable element of a product or service

and is achieved when expectations or requirements are met”.

Every organization has its own business objectives such as to produce the

quality products/services, create the value for the stockholders, be an

employer of choice, enhance the customer satisfaction and increase the

market share, implement the best practices and cost saving techniques, gain

the popularity in the market and get industry wide recognition for excellence

etc. To achieve such objectives and get the market share the organization

must learn to take advantage from the opportunities, avoid simply reacting to


18

the change and fear of change. Along with the process improvement models

the organization can also make its own procedures according to its needs and

requirements. It can find the new ways to raise the productivity, lower its

expanses and predict its cost and revenue. The organization should be so

mature that it will anticipate the problems and prevent it from happening. The

top management in any organization should have the clear product viability

and profitability as all important decisions are taken at the top level (Weltgen

W., 2004). The point to ponder is whether the organization is using the

accurate data for the process inputs, or how it is known that the data is

reasonable and accurate and reliable? So an automated data collection

system has to be in place to avoid data reliability problems. Other critical

successes factor for successful implementation of quality programs are

continues improvement, customer satisfaction, quality and data management,

training and education (Huarng and Chen, 2002).

Processes are measured to make sure that the processes are adding

value to the product/service. Then a consistence work is done to make the

process comparison valid. Of course, that implies a standard way of doing

things and a baseline against which to measure. By doing such activity and

following the cycle, suitable process standards are formed. These process

standards are appropriate and successful for the workplace and business

fundamentals to better control and improve processes.

For doing all such activities there should be a good management,

fundamental technical skills, planning and tracking need to be understood and

encouraged. Version control and managing risks are essential disciplines that

need to be addressed. And managing requirements so that value to customer

delivered is a key business objective. The organization should focus on the

incremental improvement through Total Quality Management (TQM). These

elements help to make the organization capable, mature and better achieve

its objectives. Also it provides the guidance to define and standardized the

processes, increase the effectiveness, limit rework and measure the

performance of the organization, and use the data to manage the business.


19

So, process quality improvement promises measurable benefits for

organizations, particularly in the ability to estimate effort, build quality into

system and the delivery of quality products. Gurus of quality believe that gist

of quality is “timely achieving total customer requirements and fulfilling present

and future needs and expectations of customer, at a price what the customer

is willing to pay”.

The three basic aspects usually associated with quality are quality of

design, quality of conformance and quality of performance.

2.1. QUALITY OF DESIGN (QOD) .

Quality of Design is concerned with how good the design is. It is a value

inherent in the design. QoD is an area that is addressed early in the life cycle

of the product. It refers to the level of excellence the product is intended to

possess (Kishore and Naik, 2003). As per renowned quality guru Juran,

quality of design is an overall component of quality, which is defined as

‘fitness for use’ (Juran and Gryna, 1988). Another concept integrated into

QoD is called Quality Function deployment which builds methods for

deploying the design quality into products, systems and subsystems, and

ultimately to a specific process of product development (Akao, 1991).

2.2. QUALITY OF CONFORMANCE (QOC)

QoC is a term used to express how well the product conforms the design

specifications. A good design is pointless if the product does not conform to

the design specifications; QoC has to be ensured through the process that

builds the product. Essentially, QoC is about meeting the promise made in the

design specifications. In other words “Quality of Conformance implies that the

manufactured product or the service rendered must meet the standards

selected in the design phase” (Mitra A., 2005). Another reason why quality is

not implemented in SMEs is that organizations have generally tall structure,

decision making is only at the top level, where as low level employees have

no authority to take corrective actions and they don’t have freedom to

improvise their own ideas (Weltgen, 2004).


20

Both the quality of design and quality of conformance are very important.

Since QoD is a base for subsequent work. Design, too, has to conform to the

needs or requirements of the customer. Once we know what the requirements

are, it is required to come up with a creative design that meets these

requirements.

2.3. QUALITY OF PERFORMANCE (QOP)

is concerned with how well the product functions or service performs

when put to use. “It measures the degree to which the product or service

satisfies the customer” (Mitra A., 2005). This is a function of both the QoD and

QoC. Remember that the final test of product or service acceptance always

lies with the customers. Meeting their expectations is the major goal. If a

product does not function well enough to meet these expectations, or if a

service does not live up to customer standards, then adjustments need to be

made in the design or conformance phase.

The main focus of the Quality Control (QC) is to check that software

should be free of all types of functional and non functional non-conformances.

Quality Control is defined as “the set of activities designed to evaluate the

quality of developed and manufactured products and the process of verifying

one’s own work or that of a co-worker” (Kishore and Naik , 2003). Quality

control is a set of activities intended to ensure that quality requirements are

actually met (Praxion, 2010). Feigenbaum (1991) coined the term “Total

quality control”, (TQC): An efficient structure to encapsulate the quality-

development, quality-maintenance, and quality-improvement which all

together work for maximum customer satisfaction. He emphasized on

planning for quality improvement and acting on standards after they have

been set.

Quality is not just the responsibility of one person in the organization, it is

the duty of all the employees working in it. Everyone involved directly or

indirectly in the development of a software product is responsible for its

performance and services. Unfortunately, something (Quality) that is viewed

as everyone’s responsibility can fall apart in the implementation phase

because employees consider processes as overhead and try to bypass the


21

responsibility. One of the reasons of failure of quality implementation in most

of the small organizations is not failure of quality, but it is the failure of

management to implement satisfactory quality methodology. Another reason

for collapse of the local quality practices is that employees don’t execute

processes religiously (Thorn and Ron, 1999).

This behaviour towards quality by local practitioners portraits an

ineffective system where the quality assurance processes only exist on paper.

Thus what is needed is “a system that ensures that all procedures that have

been designed and planned are followed”. The objective of the quality

assurance function is to have in place a formal system that continually

surveys the effectiveness of the quality philosophy of the company. The

quality assurance system (team) thus audits the various departments and

assists them in meeting their responsibilities for producing a quality product.

Quality Assurance (QA) is a bundle of processes poised to establish self-

confidence that quality necessities will be met. QA is one of the functions of

quality management (Praxiom, 2010). Quality Assurance can be defined as

“all those planned or systematic actions necessary to provide confidence that

a product or service will satisfy given needs” (Mitra A., 2005).

The quality is presumed as an over head by the management and the

operational staff. They think that any type of quality control or quality

assurance activity is something that increases the costs and are therefore

reluctant to include these in their production processes. There is a very

powerful statement by the quality guru Philip Crosby, that ‘quality is free’. He

says that there is a cost of poor quality—“the cost of quality is the expense of

doing things wrong” (Crosby, 1979). He explains how creating products of

high quality is less expensive than creating products of poor quality. Spending

some cost on quality will not increase the overall cost but in real sense it will

reduce the overall cost of the product/service. Using quality mechanisms

requires time and effort (hence involves costs) but it helps us in reducing

errors and thus results in products with lower level of non conformance. Poor

quality means more product failure. Defect detection or prevention in the early

phases therefore reduces the rework costs incurred due to product failure.

When quality is poor, there are possibilities of both internal failure cost (costs


22

of failures that are detected before the product is shipped) and external failure

costs (costs of failures that occur or may occur after the product is shipped).

Failure implies that work will need to be done to repair the product. The later

the defect is detected, the higher the cost to fix it (Crosby, 1979).

To improve the quality the prevention costs (related to quality assurance

activities) and the appraisal costs (related to quality control activities) should

be incurred by the company. We can prevent the defects by putting in place

the processes that reduce the probability of defects getting into the product.

Quality planning, proper training of persons, setting up appropriate processes,

standards, templates, using suitable tools, having design reviews—all these

help to prevent defects. It is important to reduce the defects and catch them at

the early stage so rework cost and warranty claims in case defective product

is shipped out are minimized (Kishore and Naik , 2003).

All these activities related to the quality can only be done if the quality is

implemented with a true philosophy and mindset and culture change

according to principles and practices of TQM. Only then an organization is

able to introduce a quality program in the organization and make it a part of its

regular processes. As asserted by Fenghueih, et al, (1999) the maximum

benefits of ISO 9000 standards implementation in organizations can be

ascertained through adopting the principles and practices of TQM.

2.4. IMPORTANCE OF TQM IN AN ORGANIZATION

The local culture is quite apprehensive about quality and specially TQM,

but before going into further details let’s briefly get introduced to concepts and

philosophy of Total Quality Management (TQM). According to research

studies carried (Ross, 1994, Gulbro et al., 2000), all TQM Implementation

efforts are not met with success. This is because TQM requires varying

grounds for effective implementation, based on long term planning and zeal of

top management to pursue performance improvement. In case of SME the

chase to adopt TQM, has been slow as compared to large companies. One of

the reasons can be that SME focus mainly on ISO 9000 certification, and very

few SME have gone beyond that due to their internal culture issue and


23

resource constraints (Yusof, 1999). In our local software industry TQM word is

there but without the understanding of its true philosophy. In order to

successfully implement ISO 9000 a recommendation was given by a

Malaysian research study (Samat et al., 2008), that to gain maximum benefits

while doing ISO 9000 certification, SMEs should follow TQM principles and

philosophy.

2.4.1. CUSTOMER ORIENTATION WITH TQM

For continuous process improvement (CPI) in the quality of software

products the implementation of TQM philosophy plays an important role. TQM

is a customer oriented approach with a strong ingredient of customer

relationship management (CRM). CRM not only enhances the performance

and effectiveness of customer related processes but also creates a good

image in the minds of the customers. “In today’s dynamic era of globalization,

customer retention is only achieved through TQM and continuous

improvement” (Shahmoradi 2005). The organizations should strive for

meeting and exceeding customer’s current and future expectations in each

and every aspect (Kanji, 1998).

2.4.2. TOP MANAGEMENT COMMITMENT

World renowned quality gurus (Deming, Feigenbaum, Juran, Crosby and

Ishikawa) are all in agreement with one notion that, it is the management and

system that is behind the cause of poor quality and it is not due to workers.

For improving the quality of the products and staying competitive, companies

are keen to implement TQM. TQM Programs cannot be implemented without

the total and unprecedented support and full involvement of the leadership. It

is also implemented in the organization to increase the profit and also to

increase market share. TQM program provides a paradigm shift in

management philosophy for improving organization effectiveness (Lee, 2006).

By implementing TQM principles, not only it motivates the employees but also

gives new direction and quality guidelines to the company to achieve

continuous improvement through customer satisfaction (Sahraoui and

Sofiane, 2004). Top management gives direction to the organization and acts

as the driving force behind steering the organization towards achievement of


24

its goals and objectives through performance improvement and customer

satisfaction (Huq and Z., 2005) and (Rad and A.M.M., 2006 ). In order to

achieve TQM organizations need to change their behaviour toward quality by

creating true quality culture (Juran, 1988)b.

Training is another quality practice that is mostly ignored by the leadership

as it assumes that training is a cost. Whereas TQM emphasizes on

continuous and consistent organization wide learning. Learning induces

positive culture and by enhancing the skills of the workforce organizations can

have gains and add value to the business (Rad, 2005) .

2.5. SME QUALITY CULTURE

Small and Medium size Software Houses (SMSH) culture can be

referred to as behaviour of immaturity of organizations towards software

quality improvement that results in threats for unpredictable, inconsistent

and poor performance to deliver non conformant products to the customer.

SME and SMSH approach towards quality and its organizational culture

becomes a vital issue in the Performance of local markets, especially in

context of the prevailing attitude of leadership towards quality. A detailed

discussion is as follows.

Prerequisites of quality culture include change of attitude, beliefs, power

system, and mindset towards long term planning. TQM is the total

transformation of employee behaviour which bears quality sensitiveness

towards organizational culture (Huq, 2005) and (Rad, 2006). It is an old

saying that people always require business to work, and we have to go

through to our history which tells us that organizational culture tends people

should work towards achieving their common goals by being united

(Pennington, 2003).

According to Hofstede, (2001) Pakistan’s national culture depicts high

uncertainty avoidance, high power distance, high collectivism, high

masculinity and very low long term orientation. These behaviours challenge

TQM philosophy regarding long term planning. These characteristic can be a


25

major problem and resistance to change present local SME culture into quality

culture.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) culture can be referred to as

behaviour of SME towards software development that may results in threats

for SME performance. SME culture concept becomes a vital issue in the local

market as well as at the international level with the international standards for

process improvement not supporting SME culture. An organizational culture

can be broadly based on practices and basic values, and beliefs of the

organization (Hofstede, 2001). The concept of SMEs was introduced in

twentieth century and was adopted by the industries for specialized business

needs (Shoniregun, 2004). SMEs are mainly identified and branded by two

categories namely number of employees and annual turnover. According to a

Malaysian study by Saleh and Ndubisi (2006), SMEs in manufacturing

category have employees less than 150 or have annual sales turnover less

than $78 million. SMEs in services mainly Information & Communication

Technology (ICT) have full-time employees less than 50 and annual revenue

less than $15.6 million. 4

SMSH are facing change which is known as Information Technology (IT)

evolution because SMSH produce a large number of low cost software

products (Shoniregun, 2004). The SME criteria used in Europe typically

include employee population, turnover rate, resources and independence.

SMEs have 10-250 employees with an annual turnover of less than €40

million (Baskerville and Heje, 1999). The awareness of quality and

development process issues and available resources may discriminate SMEs

from Very Small Enterprises (VSE) with fewer than 25 employees (Habra et

al, 2007). According to Shoniregun (2004), Large enterprises usually use

predefined models like CMM, CMMI, ISO, and SPICE (also known as ISO/IEC

15504). Some extremely large enterprises have created their own reference

models. However, the structure and architecture of predefined international

models is incompatible and unable to coexist with SME. A biased model or a

4 These figures are given with respect to Malaysian manufacturing and service industry.


26

combination of some parts of models has been used in SME but at some

instances it affects project quality and cost schedules.

AN article by Habra et al., (2007) indicates that the SME software

processes rank very low relative to maturity scales of international process

models. Some small settings show obvious technical competence in their

local specific technical domain but global weakness of their software process

cannot be overlooked. The interdependence of maturity levels of processes

within the same organization is very imbalanced in such a way that very good

processes are combined with very low-level ones. High-quality practices are

often legally or contractually imposed customer–supplier relationship practices

which are considered as a burden rather than an asset by the organization

itself. Limited resources and cost constraints do not allow an organization to

penetrate across limited usage of available resources. SMEs are composed of

small teams, in some extant with lack of expertise so a lot of work burden is

already imposed on employees in such a way that they cannot perform

improvement tasks (Habra et al, 2007).

The quality of SME products is influenced by unawareness of quality

issues. A SME product reflects the implementation of poor quality control

procedures. The tight deadline for production tasks is a major cause that

prevents a product to be improved by quality improvement procedures. SMEs

have not adopted TQM in same extent as larger organizations (Richard

Baskerville and Heje, 1999). Quality issues are not addressed explicitly with a

real involvement of management (Montazemi, 2006). SME has flexibility to

take a quick turn toward new quality features and IT infrastructure which

remains stable (Habra et al, 2007).. The software life cycle is not completely

formalized in SMEs. Testing is usually considered to be the most important

phase after the development but testing is often shortened to meet deadlines

or because of lack of resources. The higher managers or management

authority have less familiarity with project management and project planning

that affects deadlines and quality. The resources devoted to employee

training and human resource practices are usually very limited due to budget

constraints. SME faces difficulties to impose a methodological approach. The

lack of risk management brings more complexity for quality control and project


27

management. SMEs lacks IT knowledge and technical skills because they

tend to have centralized structure and to employ generalist rather than

specialist workers. SME have less in the way of resources to absorb shocks

of unsuccessful investment ( Montazemi, 2006).

Process improvement efforts require investment such as budget, time,

training, task assignment and resources. It also requires sponsorship from top

executives and a good communication scheme to motivate the individuals

involved in the improvement endeavour. Due to high turnover rate and less

skilled employees who already have a bundle of work to do SME cannot put

their efforts in improvement tasks. Further challenges increase when an

organization wants to successfully carry out a process improvement project

based on ISO, CMM, CMMI or SPICE (Garcia et al., 2006).

SME needs to develop new ways of creating value and requires defined

enterprise architecture, a comprehensive IT infrastructures and diverse way of

thinking about doing business. A typical SME is looking for short-term

solutions to known problems with minimum investment, minimal disruption,

and quick demonstrable results (Miluk, 2006).

2.6. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

In order to achieve excellence in software product development and to

produce reliable, efficient, maintainable and highly optimized software

products, the IT practitioners are becoming well aware of Quality improvement

and Software Process Improvement (SPI). The motivation behind these

quality oriented preventive practices is to reduce rework cost through

minimization of errors. This is the reason that SPI has become a separate

discipline and has gained utmost importance in the domain of software

engineering. It has resulted into introduction of new wave of products for

process modelling, evaluation and improvement (Boldyreff, Newman and

Taramaa, 1996).

Though these tools do help in managing processes and configuration

management of different standards but still these tools have issues in process

measurement, balancing, optimization and modelling of different processes. A


28

SPI model by the name of O-SPIM was developed by (Xiaoguang, et al,

2008), which was adaptive enough to cater process measurement and

management needs of multiproduct, multi-project organization-wide business

processes. This model supported comprehensively needs of SPI throughout

the software development life cycle. It also provided features for product and

resource balancing.

It is still argued that ISO 9000 is not suitable enough for SPI and a

rigorous and substantial approach towards SPI is required in terms of process

measurement and improvement. ISO 9000 can only be helpful to induce

quality awareness, as recorded by Stelzer, Mellis and Herzwurm, (1996).

Many practitioners have a wrong assumption that SPI can be made part of the

ongoing process quickly. According to Jansma P. A. (2005), converting to SPI

is a slow and adaptable journey which is acquired through experience

specially in software engineering scientific environment.

SPI efforts and goals must be aligned to performance measures which

should be linked directly with business goals and process technologies should

be adopted for effective automation process performance measurement and

management. SPI requires training and dedicated resources for process

tailoring and measurement. Management must stop practices for not

deploying fulltime resources for SPI, as in SMEs that deploy part time

resources all their efforts become futile (Shen and Ruan, 2008). As asserted

by (Tanaka T., et al, 1998), SPI and quality improvement starts from home.

Their team developed a “(High Quality software creation support virtual

Center (HQC)”, which first offered an in house service within organization for

SQI, SPI and automation of internal processes performance measurement.

After success HQC started offering services organization wide. A similar effort

was made by another team lead by (Basili’s) who gave us the Goal Question

Matrix (GQM), model for measuring targeted performance. GQM was based

on first deriving measures from performance goals and later developing

performance metrics based on the already developed measures to interpret

process performance results (Shull, Seaman, Zelkowltz , 2006).


29

Process reliability, productivity and quality are usually measured by human

perception in a poor quality environment. Preferably, an effective way to

measure process performance and quality is to first understand the process at

micro and macro levels and then use statistical measurement techniques and

automated software tools for data analysis (Siok and Tian 2007).

Many SMSHs started to work on process improvement projects but their

management is not putting full interest to continue these because of the after

effects to their enterprises and being expensive than the existing conventional

monitoring and management systems. Now the question arises to evaluate

the value of the revised process to be effectively implemented in

organizational change projects. According to study by Lee and Ahn that

evaluates process improvement from organizational change in the area of

resource utilization. In this regard some alternatives were explored like task

activity analysis, bottleneck analysis, cycle cost analysis and change resource

analysis in terms of human resource allocation, finance and time. It is

expected that new process must reduce the synchronization delay activities

and resource contention occurs. So this could be achieved if the evaluation of

business processes redesign is done organization wide (Lee S. and Ahn H.,

2008)

Business process modelling and improvement to make a successful

venture has been tried by many enterprises. Tabular Application Development

(TAD) an object oriented methodology, is another such effort which is

invaluable in developing efficient information systems. TAD has six different

phases and uses tables which represent sequences of events and are

understandable by the normal users. TAD is beneficial for business process

improvement and modelling (Dami. et al, 2008).

According to Sun and Liu (2010) to assess software processes

improvement is an expensive project and a lot of resources are required to

conduct it, therefore resource-light technologies are desirable in decision

making for improvement. A SPI framework integrating Quality Function

Deployment (QFD) with CMMI to achieve three major objectives is proposed.

It starts with mapping of process requirements including business


30

requirements to CMMI by using QFD. The method is based on QFD for

prioritization and integration of requirement from multiple perspectives and

SPI actions based on process requirement. This framework has a unique

feature that priority values of actions can be compared with process areas

(PAs).

2.7. SUMMARY

This chapter was divided into 3 sections. In the first section significance

of quality is explained with the help of first defining quality and importance of

quality that quality is a relative term and is judged differently by different

people according to their respective environment. At large all quality

classifications have commonality of following two characteristics: absence of

defects and meeting customer (product) requirements and needs. Quality is

further discussed in terms of quality of design, quality of conformance and

overall quality assurance. The second section highlights the importance of

TQM in organizations with an approach that TQM is a customer oriented

philosophy with a strong ingredient of customer relationship management and

long term planning and above all total management commitment. TQM

program provides a paradigm shift in management philosophy for improving

organizational business performance, effectiveness and over all

organizational improvement towards achieving goals through innovation and

CPI. In the third section importance of organizational culture and SME culture

is discussed to assert that it plays an important role in developing maturity,

learning and improvement in the business performance of SME.

Organizational quality culture groups people together with an orientation to

work towards achieving their common goals by being united. The idea is to

align all efforts towards achieving organizational set performance goals by

creating process synergy through TQM principles. In the end efforts in

process improvement are explored by citing different examples and lessons

learned during process improvement projects taken up by SMEs in the IT

sector. It is a global experience that all process improvement efforts demand

that top management to rethink quality and adopt quality religiously on

consistent basis. Management should adopt a policy to automate Quality

Management System (QMS) systems and train the work force in the domain


31

of quality improvement. Quality comes through experience and cannot be

improved in one go. Performance measurement of processes and tailoring of

processes requires dedicated resources which top management hesitates to

acquire. All measurements should be done through an automated tool or data

collection system, as human perception may cause issues and problems in

productivity and reliability of measures.

The analysis of literature review has revealed some gaps for SME

practices pertaining to TQM, Quality culture and process improvement

practices. The following set of guidelines is presented to fulfil these gaps and

enhance the performance of local SMSH.

Top management should guarantee total commitment and involvement

towards quality improvement activities. Employees should be involved in while

planning long term goals in order to improve employee involvement and

develop ownership. This will reduce employee turnover rate as change of

personal is the biggest risk for SME. SPI activities should be linked with

customer satisfaction and organizational goals, and top management should

prioritize to improve key process areas accordingly. Practices for short-

termism should be abolished and organization wide long term planning to be

done on continuous basis. Resources allocated on SPI should be full time

employees and process improvement activities should be considered as

investment as SPI will reap profits in the long run. All activities like process

measurement, data collection and process rating should be automated as

human perception is poor and inefficient as compared to automated process

measurement tools. Business process redesign should be carried out across

the organization to resolve the problems of resource contention which is the

biggest problem in SME. Process redesign will reduce the synchronization

delays in processes and hence improve overall effectiveness.

Chapter 3 Quality Models

32

CHAPTER 3- QUALITY MODELS

This chapter starts with introduction to evolution of quality models. It is

followed by a detailed discussion on the leading quality models for

implementation of quality improvement practices in the software industry. The

models under discussion are ISO 9001, CMM, CMMI, SPICE, PSP and TSP.

A detail structure of each model is presented along with strengths and

weaknesses of leading software quality models. Through critical analysis

comparison of each model with respect to SME environment is also

presented.

As per research structure the research question 2 is addressed in the

following section.

Question:2 “What are the different types of leading models of Software

Process Improvement (SPI) being practiced world wide as best practices

to improve software quality?

Since 1990’s the emphasis on managing the projects, quality standards and

software process models has increased. The IT industry feels that there

should be some international rules and regulations for the software houses to

built the quality product/service. Some of well known software quality models

are ISO 900: 2000, CMM, 5 CMMI 6 , SPICE, TSP and PSP. International

Standard Organization (ISO) established ISO 9001 generalized standards for

quality management systems suitable for industrial processes and it was more

popular in European countries (Darrel, 1994) and (Ibanez et al., 1996). Later

5 Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University. Capability Maturity Model Integration is a service mark of Carnegie Mellon University

6 CMMI, CMM are registered with the US Patents and Trademarks Office by Carnegie Mellon University.


33

in 1995 ISO and International Electro-technical Commission (ETC) jointly

released ISO/IEC 12207, a standard for information technology life cycle

processes. For information technology software process measurement

ISO/IEC 15939 was developed. British Standard Institute (BSI) initiated their

own standard guidelines to implement ISO 9001, and companies who satisfy

the BSI guidelines get ISO 9000/ TickIT certification (Sheard, 2001). Software

Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University developed a

framework for Department of Defence, USA, called Capability Maturity Model

(CMM). SW-CMM v.1.0 for software was released in 1991, which provided a

comprehensive framework with detailed description of processes for the

software development and system engineering (Paulk et al., 1991). Later after

having a detailed feedback from professionals in IT industry SEI rereleased

the final version 1.1 of SW-CMM in 1992 which was tailored according to the

increasing needs of the software industry (Paulk etal., 1993). The latest

version is Capability Model Integration ( CMMI) version 1.2 . (Paulk., 1994).

CMMI is a result of evolution of process areas from SW-CMM, the System

Engineering Capability model (SECM) and Integrated Product Development

CMM (IPD-CMM). CMMI team developed a cohesive set of processes to that

can be used by those who are using the source models and also those who

are new to CMMI, so that they can improve their products and services

(CMMI Team, 2006). CMMI also incorporates standard practices from ISO

9000, ISO/IEC 12207 and ISO/IEC 15288. In order to evaluate Maturity and

capability assessment it uses CMM-Based Appraisal for Internal Process

Improvement (CBA IPI), which is authorised by SEI lead assessor who

mediates the organization assessment through a rigorous self appraisal.

(Sheard, 2001). The evolution process of quality models development in the

fields of Engineering, Software, Information Technology and manufacturing

can be ascertained from the following map in FIGURE 2 given by Sheard,

(2001).


34

FIGURE 2 EVOLUTION QUAGMIRE OF QUALITY MODELS

(Source: Sheard, (2001)).

These software process models help the organizations to put their

software development and management processes in place. They provide a

framework for the organizations for their quality journey. These software

process models stipulate the policies and processes that are adopted by the

organization to achieve its objectives through implementing Quality

Management System (QMS). All experts and gurus of quality like Crosby

(1979, Deming (1986) and Juran, (1988)b, totally agree on the notion that

implementation of quality standards, quality practices and QMS will make

organizations more competitive, reduce rework costs and minimize non

conformance. These models are increasingly adopted by organizations that

now believe in a ‘process-centric’ approach to execute successful projects

and build usable software products. Hyde and Wilson (2004) suggest that the

realization of intangible benefits to implement software improvement initiatives

is important and should be part of the top management concerns. The


35

assumption is that by having better standards and processes, provided it is

ensured that standards are religiously practiced by the software practitioners,

output from these processes is assured. As Krasner (1994) also reasserts this

notion that investment in quality improvement will bring large profits and

biggest payoffs to organizations.

The basic aim of these software process models is to improve the

capability and enablement of the processes in the organization. By doing such

act the processes of the organization become mature and in return the

organization achieves the higher maturity levels. In addition typical software

management problems like delays, scope creep, incomplete requirements,

cost overruns and project risks are controlled and direction of organization’s

performance is geared towards growth. (Kishore and Naik, 2003) and

(Irigoyen et al., 2007). These software process models help the organization

to improve business performance provided there is a commitment from top

management, employees are motivated, quality management training and

education is administered and organization is focused towards internal and

external customer satisfaction at the work place (Porter and Parker, 1993)

and (Sila and Ebraimpour, 2002).

3.1 SOFTWARE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT MODELS

The rest of the chapter provides a brief introduction to ISO 9000: 2000,

CMM, CMMI, SPICE, TSP and PSP, and their suitability for Small and

Medium Software Houses (SMSH). It will be appropriate to compare the

structure and quality management life cycle of each model before going into

detailed discussion. A high level structure and architecture of these models is

given in the following chart.


36

TABLE 1 Structure of Quality Models

3.1 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ORGANIZATION (ISO9001:2000)

The ISO and the IEC (the International Electro technical Commission)

joined forces and put in place a joint technical committee, named Joint

Technical Committee 1 (ISO/IEC JTC1) with the following mandate:

“Standardization in the Field of Information Technology: Information

technology includes the specification, design, and development of systems

and tools dealing with the capture, representation, processing, security,

transfer, interchange, presentation, management, organization, storage, and

retrieval of information” (International Standard Organization, 1997). The

mandate of sub-committee SC7, within JTC1, is to standardize processes,


37

supporting tools, and supporting technologies for the engineering of software

products and systems in the SMEs. In the SC7 standards, a number are

grouped together in a category called “Software and Systems Engineering

Processes”. These are standards describing good software and systems

engineering practices and their assessment. FIGURE 3 shows the high Archie

and inter relationship of these standards. Some of the significant standards

are: (Laporte and April, 2006)

• ISO/IEC 12207 Software Life Cycle Processes

• ISO/IEC 15288 Systems Life Cycle Processes

• ISO/IEC 15504 Software Process Assessment series

• ISO/IEC 90003 Guidelines for the Applications of ISO 9001 to

Computer Software.

FIGURE 3 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KEY SC7 STANDARDS

(Source : Laporte and April, (2006)).

ISO/IEC 12207

&

ISO/IEC 15288

ISO 9001 &

ISO 90003

ISO/IEC 15504

Quality

MATUR I TY

Life Cycle


38

ISO began in 1926 as the International Federation of National

Standardizing Association (ISA). ISO published its first standard in 1951.

Since then ISO has been developing technical standards suitable for all

industrial sectors with exception of electrical and electronic engineering

standards which are covered by International Electro-technical Commission

(IEC) and Information technology covered by joint committee (JTC1) between

ISO and IEC. ISO 9001:2000 QMS upgrade of ISO 9001-1994 and is

considered as a base for quality assurance (QA) in development, production,

installation, and maintenance in software .(Wadsworth et al, 2002).

The ISO family includes ISO 9002 for Quality Management in

production sector; ISO 9003 covers quality system for testing and inspection;

ISO 9004 is meant for developing quality management system and ISO 8402

is a comprehensive quality vocabulary that includes basic fundamental

definitions of quality terms (Paulk , 1994). The basic concern of the ISO 9001

is to manage the quality. This standard includes the definition of the quality,

quality management, quality management system. It is process oriented

framework and provides the ways that how the organization define its

processes and how to manage them properly. According to Claude et al.,

(2006).study, research committee on very small enterprises (VSEs) findings, it

was observed that process priorities of SMEs are different than that of large

organizations. For example consistency across teams for SMEs is at lesser

priority than larger organizations similarly SMEs have different priorities to

implement ISO 9000 processes as compared to large organizations.

The year 2008 version 4 of ISO 900:2000 standard is ISO 9001:2008.

It has five main clauses against which the conformance is checked. These

specify the requirements for the Quality Management System (QMS) of the

organization. The five clauses are: (International Standard organization,

2008)b.

Quality management system (QMS) specifies that there needs to be a

quality management system. It specifies the requirements for establishing


39

the QMS and documentation including the way documents will be

controlled.

Management responsibility covers aspects like management commitment,

customer focus, quality policy, planning, responsibility, authority and

communication and management review. Essentially, through this clause,

the standard ensures that management is committed to and drives quality

by establishing policy and objectives, by focusing on quality and by

planning for quality.

Resource management specifies that the organization has to determine

and provide the recourses needed for implementing the quality

management system effectively and achieving customer satisfaction.

Product realization is the process that converts input requirements into

products and services and achieves customer satisfaction. In a software

organization, this would include processes for software development,

project management, tools and methodologies.

Measurement, analysis and improvement cover measurement, analysis

and improvement. Measurement and analysis are required to check

product conformity to the QMS. They also enable continuous improvement

of the effectiveness of the quality management system.

3.1.1 ISO 9000 STRENGHTS

The benefits and successes factors of using ISO in SMEs are:

• High level management support.

• Training investments.

• The existence of a process group engaged with the results and

confident in future benefits.

• Communication establishment with all stakeholders.


40

• Dissemination of process culture.

• Maintenance of software engineering knowledge inside the

organization aiming to make the project team more independent

(Ferreira et al., 2006).

The ISO 9001:2000 version is a software process model for software

quality improvement. The QMS is a process management model for

managing all processes of an organization. Some members of the

international standard community assert that a careful insight into ISO 9001

does reflect continuous process improvement (Paulk, 1995). ISO has the

international recognition and appeal. ISO highlights development, supply and

maintenance of the software and provides the freedom for the

implementation. ISO checks the quality control activity and assures the quality

of the product/service through quality of the processes. In order to make

implementation of ISO 9000 more practical in software industry the standard

was documented explicitly for software firms by a British guide called TickIT,

(1992), provides additional information on using ISO 9000-3 and 9001 in the

software arena.

3.1.2 ISO 9000 WEAKNESSES

Besides strengths, ISO standard still has few weaknesses because:

ISO describes a brief process model for software organizations and offers a

certification which can be achieved within few months. ISO takes the first

step and breaks new ground for software development field so it has many

missing details to be covered, like the issue of the decision analysis and

resolution, no details about the organizational training, risk management and

performance measurement. All the analysis is done casually. There is a main

concern that these large models do not work in small settings such as for IT

companies with less than 15-20 employees. ISO nor CMM give explicit

requirement for the human resource (Grunmbacher, 1997).

Initial versions of ISO 9001provide no information for the organization

assets such as the repository and database. Also does not cover quantitative

project management and the organizational innovation and deployment.


41

According to Demiriirs (1998) the following main weaknesses and

limitations of ISO 9000 and CMM implementation evolved during the study of

software houses in SMEs.

• Lack of guidance to implement QMS in IT firms.

• Lack of expertise in quality improvement missing in small settings.

• Lack of knowledge and quality management experience among

consultants in IT firms.

• Lack of maturity and long term commitment in QMS processes due to

small size of organizations, as in case of CMM in order to reach

Maturity Level 4-5, it will take five to six years.

• No motivation among senior managers to concentrate on process

improvement activities.

3.2 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL

Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a comprehensive model for the

software organizations. It describes the principles and practices underlying

the maturity of software process. It provides help to software organization to

improve the maturity of their software processes in terms of an evolutionary

path from ad- hoc chaotic processes to mature, qualified and disciplined

software processes. It is basically based on the concept of process maturity

and levels of maturity. It is a staged model that defines the capability maturity

levels to assess the standing of the organization. CMM focus is on identifying

Key Process Areas (KPA) and the exemplary practices that may comprise a

disciplined software process where each stage acts as a foundation to

propagate to continuous Process Improvement (CPI) (Paulk at al, 1993).

In 1987, in collaboration with Department of Defence, the Software

Engineering Institute (SEI) with assistance from MITRE Corporation, started

developing a quality improvement framework based on 5 Maturity levels. In

1987 this quality improvement framework was implemented on a student

project and its findings were documented by Humphrey, (1989). The model is

known as a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for software which evolved after

four years of extensive feedback and assessment from Industry and Defence


42

Department. (Paulk, 1991). CMM practices are designed to help an

organization to set process improvement strategies by focusing on limited

KPA to steadily improve and achieve process capability and process maturity.

Process capability defines the range of expected results to be achieved.

Process maturity means that the organization's software process is well

defined, managed, controlled and effective. Key Practices (KP) describe the

activities to implement a KPA. CMM maturity levels define a hierarchy to

measure the development capability or maturity of an organization's quality

process. Each level focuses on one important quality practice of a process.

Achieving maturity level results in an increase in the quality improvement

capability of the software process. Common features measure key practices

associated with each process area, based on its ability, performance and

measurement and analysis (Biberoglu and Haddad, 2002) and (Paulk, 1995).

CMM Maturity Levels are discussed in many articles and case studies

including: (Paulk,1994), (Emam and Jung, 2001), (Herbsleb, 1997), (Lawlis et

al.,199 and (Clark,1997).

• Level 0- Incomplete Processes: Absence of processes or general

failure to achieve process objectives. No process to product realization.

• Level 1-The Initial Level: Performed Processes. The first and the

lowest level in CMM is the Initial level. At this point organizations have

few or no processes. Successes are mainly due to individual initiative

and effort and processes that may exist are given a go-bye in crisis.

The outcome of a project is therefore unpredictable.

• Level 2-The Repeatable Level: Managed Processes. At repeatable

level, the processes are followed at the project level for various

software project management functions and their performance is

planned and tracked through a documented process.. At this level,

since the project management processes are in place, the organization

is ‘disciplined’ and processes are expected to repeat successful

practices as done in similar projects.

• Level 3-The Defined Level: Established Processes. At this level, the

organization defines processes for software engineering and


43

management are standardized across the organization. Tailoring

guidelines are developed to create project defined software processes

and activities become stable and repeatable for implementing them

organization-wide.

• Level 4-The Managed Level: Predictable Processes. It is reached

when the organization uses quantitative goals for managing.

Quantitative goals are set for software products and processes, using

an organization-wide measurement program. The level involves a

quantitative understanding of process capability and using this to

manage processes. Variation in process performance is tracked and

risks are identified and managed.

• Level 5-The Optimizing Level: Optimized Processes. It is the

highest maturity level of the CMM. At this level, the organization

improves continuously, setting new goals and responding to new

technologies and challenges. Processes are cost-effective and are

improved over time to meet the organization needs. At this highest

level, the process performance is measured for continuous process

improvement to verify whether the changes in the processes are

providing the expected benefits.

3.2.1 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL AND SME

Capability Maturity Model (CMM) from Software Engineering Institute

has been used successfully by many organizations for software process

improvement. The success and the failure of CMM based SPI depends on

management control and strategy. The practices and the results of applying

the CMM as a software process improvement model are differing between

small organizations and large organizations (Biberoglu and Haddad, 2002).

The inherent CMM philosophy for SPI IN CMM is that it helps an

organization identify process weaknesses and technical areas where

improvements are needed.. And that’s how organizations leap to higher

maturity levels (Cattaneo et al, 1995).


44

CMM does represent a broad consensus of the software community

but it does not guarantee that software products will be successfully built and

all problems in software engineering will be adequately resolved. The CMM

based company might need to apply Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

before employing CMM-based SPI. In small businesses and small

organizations the availability of resources and personnel are the most obvious

problems in applying CMM. It is a possibility to have transition from CMM to

ISO 9000 (Jalote, 1999) as CMM-based process improvement practices are

not suitable for small businesses as such practices are initially intended for

large organizations. One widely known criticism is CMM's lack of formal

theoretical basis because it is based on experience rather than formal

theories (Biberoglu and Haddad, 2002). Inappropriate process tailoring can

cause the software process not to comply with the organizational standard

process or with international standards such as CMM (Pedreira et al., 2007).

The CMM also does not provide adequate descriptions for customer

configuration updating, which is explained by the fact that the CMM does not

focus on product software specifically, (Jansen and Brinkkemper, 2006).

There exists a disconnection between business goals and maturity levels. A

new framework using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is developed to

deal with this problem. One of the major short comings is that CMM

addresses “what to do” while leaving “how to do” to organizations. Therefore,

some methodology is needed to transform CMM activities into actions which

are detailed enough to follow by software engineers. May be a tutorial like

(TikIT) can be developed for CMM for SMEs. In addition, the process

improvements actions are directly related to process requirements but do not

consider throughout the workflow (Liu et al., 2005).

One of the characteristics of CMM is to help an organization identify

process weaknesses and technical areas where improvements are needed. In

CMM, a particular improvement process has to be practiced at certain level.

As the maturity level increases, the time spent on paper work decreases,

(Biberoglu and Haddad. 2002). The Capability Maturity Model (CMM)

summarizes the best practices for software development, and represents the


45

mainstream in software engineering (Pedreira et al., 2007). CMM has been

working so well in many organizations that they do not have plans to replace

CMM with CMMI immediately (Liu et al., 2005).

3.3 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL INTEGRATION

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a simplified

representation of global software engineering processes for software industry.

CMMI is an upgraded version of CMM and a product of SEI. It is a collection

of effective processes with one or more bodies of knowledge for organizations

and industries. It is not description of processes. It provides guidance to

process development and process improvement. Process improvement

increases process and service quality when it applies to get business

objectives. According to SEI, (2010) official website, “CMMI can be used to

guide process improvement across an organization. It helps to integrate

organizational functions, set process improvement goals and priorities,

provide guidance for quality processes, and provide more visibility into

organizational activities and links the activities with business objectives”. It

helps to ensure that products and services meet customer expectations.

CMMI is a radical and innovative process improvement technology that

inculcates capability to organization human resource to adopt sudden change

in environment, technology or business processes (Garcia, 2003). It improves

quality and process by splitting up functional processes from quality

processes. In spirit this model’s philosophy is based on management and

controls and aligns the function of three entities which are tools, processes

and people. (CMMI Team , 2006)

CMMI is a framework to evaluate and describe an organization's

software development process, benchmarks with industry standards and

helps the organization towards Continuous Process Improvement (CPI).

CMMI processes are based on best practices adopted by industry in the area

of project management and software engineering. By this model the

organization can effectively tackle quality improvements and business

performance. CMMI is designed to help an organization improve processes


46

and align them with performance goals. CMMI is not expensive model to

adopt but has high costs due to its training needs and assessment fees. Even

the level of its trainings is very abstract and one really needs to be creative to

make it applicable to SMSHs. CMMI comes in two basic representations:

staged and continuous. There is still a need of guidelines from SEI how to

implement CMMI for small firms (Beth et al., 2004).

3.3.1 CMMI STAGED AND CONTINUOUS

The CMMI v1.2 (CMMI, 2006) presents staged and continuous

representation to achieve business objectives. Each representation has

different advantages and disadvantages according to organization objectives.

The components of both the staged and continuous representations are

process areas, specific goals and specific practices. The specific goals and

specific practices are listed within each process area. The specific goals

organize specific practices and the generic goals organize generic practices.

CMMI enables process improvement approach and appraisals using

continuous and staged representations. The continuous representation

enables an organization to select a process area (or group of process areas)

and improve processes related to it. This representation uses capability levels

to characterize improvement relative to an individual process area. The

staged representation uses predefined sets of process areas to define an

improvement path for an organization. This improvement path is characterized

by maturity levels. Each maturity level provides a set of process areas that

characterize different organizational behaviours (CMMI Team , 2006).

CMMI has been developed to solve the problem of using multiple CMM

models for different areas of application. While the basic ideas remain the

same in CMM and CMMI, the primary difference is that the process

improvements are designated to individual Key Process Areas (KPA) rather

than the whole process especially in the continuous model of CMMI (Liu et al.,

2005).


47

The continuous representation uses six capability levels. The

continuous representation groups process areas by affinity categories and

designates capability levels for process improvement within each process

area. It allows to select the order of improvement and mitigates risk areas of

an organization. It enables comparisons across and among organizations on

a process area by process area basis or by comparing results through the use

of equivalent staging. In the continuous representation, capability levels

provide a recommended order for approaching process improvement within

each process area. At the same time, the continuous representation allows

some flexibility to improve different processes at different rates and also

increases visibility of the process capability in each. (CMMI Team , 2006),

SEI (Beth M. C., et al, 2004)

The staged representation uses five maturity levels to support and

guide process improvement. The staged representation groups process areas

by maturity level, indicating which process areas to implement to achieve

each maturity level. Maturity levels represent a process-improvement path

illustrating improvement evolution for the entire organization pursuing process

improvement. It provides a proven sequence of improvements, beginning with

basic management practices and progressing through a predefined and

proven path of successive levels, each serving as a foundation for the next. It

permits comparisons across and among organizations by the use of maturity

levels and provides an easy migration from the SW-CMM to CMMI. It builds

an archive of use with the help of case studies to demonstrate Return on

Investment (ROI). IT supports organizations who want to improve their

product line across the board. SEI, (CMMI Team., et al, 2006).

CMMI is a framework that is developed with experience and maturity of

the organization therefore there is no shortcut for attaining CMMI assessment

qualification within months or days. In the SEI findings according to Siviy and

Forrester, (2004) moving from CMMI maturity Level-3 to Level- 5 takes a

duration of 9 months, and from Maturity Level-1 to Maturity Level-5 it may

take 3 years or more. A typical move from one level to subsequent level on

the average takes 12-18 months per level. According to McHale (2008) for


48

organizations that began their CMMI-based SCAMPI effort in 2002 or later,

the median time to move from:

•From Maturity Level 1 to 2 = 4 months

•From Maturity Level 2 to 3 = 17 months

• From Maturity Level 3 to 4 = 15.5 months

• From Maturity Level 4 to 5 = 12.5 months

3.3.2 CMMI STAGED MATURITY LEVELS

The CMMI v1.2 staged representation, like its predecessor, describes five

distinct Maturity Levels to those organization who choose staged

representation : (Beth M. C., et al, 2004). A maturity level is a layer framework

based on standard and specific practices for organizational process

improvement. Each maturity level matures a specific process area of the

organization’s processes, systemizing it to excel to next maturity level. The

maturity level of an organization presents a way to foresee overall process

performance in a given discipline or process areas (CMMI Team, 2006).

1.Maturity Level 1 (initial) represents a process maturity characterized by

unpredictable results. Ad hoc approaches, methods, notations, tools, and

reactive management translate into a process dependent predominantly on

the skills of the team to succeed. Performance is not stable and processes

are not stable.

2. Maturity Level 2 (managed) represents a process maturity characterized

by repeatable project performance. The organization uses foundation

disciplines for requirements management; project planning; project monitoring

and control; supplier agreement management; product and process quality

assurance; configuration management and measurement/analysis. For

Maturity Level 2, the key process focus is on project-level activities and

practices.


49

3. Maturity Level 3 (defined) represents a process maturity characterized by

improving project performance within an organization. Consistent, cross-

project disciplines for Maturity Level 2 key process areas are emphasized to

establish organization-level activities and practices. Additional organizational

process areas include:

Requirements development: multi-stakeholder requirements evolution.

Technical solution: evolutionary design and quality engineering.

Product integration: continuous integration, interface control, change

management.

Verification: assessment techniques to ensure that the product is built

correctly.

Validation: assessment techniques to ensure that the right product is built.

Risk management: detection, prioritization, and resolution of relevant

issues and contingencies.

Organizational training: establishing mechanisms for developing more

proficient people.

Organizational process focus: establishing an organizational framework for

project process definition.

Decision analysis and resolution: systematic alternative assessment.

Organizational process definition: treatment of process as a persistent,

evolving asset of an organization.

Integrated project management: methods for unifying the various teams

and stakeholders within a project.

4. Level 4 (quantitatively managed) represents a process maturity

characterized by improving organizational performance. Historical results for

Maturity Level 3 projects can be exploited to make tradeoffs, with predictable

results, among competing dimensions of business performance (cost, quality,

timeliness). Additional Level 4 process areas include:

Organizational process performance: setting norms and benchmarks for

process performance.


50

Quantitative project management: executing projects based on statistical

quality-control methods.

5. Maturity Level 5 (optimized) represents a process maturity characterized

by rapidly reconfigurable organizational performance as well as quantitative,

continuous process improvement. Additional Maturity Level 5 process areas

include:

Causal analysis and resolution: proactive fault avoidance and best practice

reinforcement.

Organizational innovation and deployment: establishing a learning

organization that organically adapts and improves.

The Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement

(SCAMPI) provides detailed ratings of strengths and weaknesses relative to

the CMMI models. It helps the organization to improve their processes by

setting the priorities and focusing only on improvements that match the

business goals. It can also be used for transitioning or benchmarking to other

frameworks like CMMI to CMM or ISO Platforms (CMM, 1999).

3.3.3 CMMI CAPABILITY LEVELS FOR CONTINEOUS REPRESENTATION

To support organizations that use Continuous representation, CMMI

provides Capability levels which have flexibility to improve a specific process

area within an organization. In order to attain a certain Capability Level an

organization has to satisfy the generic goals and generic practices of a

Capability level in that specific process area. CMMI provides six Capability

Level from 0 through 5 in the following order (CMMI TEAM, 2006).

1. CAPABILITY LEVEL 1 ( PERFORMED PROCESS) is characterised to

satisfy specific goals of a process area. It supports the effort needed to

produce artefacts but it lacks institutionalization.

2. CAPABILITY LEVEL 2 (MANAGED PROCESS) is a performed process

but it is institutionalized and basic infrastructure is in place to enable the

process. Process is planned, Skilled resources are deployed and output is


51

controlled. Training is provided and relevant stake holders are involved

and process is monitored, controlled and reviewed;

3. CAPABILITY LEVEL 3 (DEFINED) is a managed (capability level 2)

process which is tailored according to the organization’s tailoring

guidelines or process descriptions, standards and procedures are

modified according to specific project or department needs and tailored

process is part of organizational process library. Process is defined,

consistent and applied according to organizational standards.

4. CAPABILITY LEVEL 4 (QUANTITATIVELY MANAGED): Organization

wants to gain more visibility into processes and in order to managed and

control the processes organization uses quantitative and statistical

techniques.. Process performance becomes the driving force behind

achieving business goals through competitive approach.

5. CAPABILITY LEVEL 5 (OPTIMIZED PROCESSES): Process variations

in selected process areas are quantitatively managed and in control and

process is in stable state. Causes of variations are minimized and process

performance is controlled and optimized for only those processes which

are critical in achieving organizational goals and objectives. Process

optimization is an incremental CPI process through innovation and

learning.

3.3.4 CMMI LIMITATIONS

Findings of report from SEI (Beth et al., 2004) give the following limitations

of CMMI in small settings:-

• CMMI fits only large scale projects and is too risky for small projects.

• A considerable effort has to be done to make CMMI applicable for

SMEs.

• Difficult to implement in SMEs as information is too large to absorb.

• CMMI is detailed model and it is difficult to scale it down for small

projects.

• It is a good model for improvement but SMEs will require a cook book

to start.


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3.3.5 CMMI STRENGTHS

The CMMI is at the forefront of process improvement because it

provides the latest best practices for product and service development and

maintenance. The CMMI models improve upon the best practices of previous

models in many important ways. CMMI strengths to follow the best practices

which enable organizations to do the following:

CMMI is more templates oriented and has disciplined environment due

to that it is adopted worldwide. CMMI provides a rich usable set of best

practices that can be the basis for accurate and reliable process

assessments. CMMI encourages the improvement throughout the enterprise

and helps the organizations consider full product development life cycle.

Training course for CMMI is available for both the staged and continuous

representations. CMMI is providing the better predictability and greater

efficiency, ultimately leading to lower costs and more satisfied customers.

CMMI more explicitly links management and engineering activities to business

objectives. CMMI ensures that the products and services meet the customer

expectations. It implements more robust high-maturity practices. CMMI also

addresses additional organizational functions critical to its products and

services. CMMI is an integrated model based on consulting and assessment

service. CMMI has strategic alignment of process for better business

performance (CMMI Team , 2006).

3.3.6 CMMI WEAKNESS

Besides all the strengths there are some weaknesses in CMMI. CMMI

was invented to help military officers quickly assess and to deliver correct

software on time, however it failed to address implementation issues of other

organizations. CMMI works better for the large organizations than the small

ones due to its rigid requirements for documentation and step by step

progress. CMMI missed to tell how to implement improvements in the

software development, it merely indicates they are needed. CMMI models are

not themselves processes or even process descriptions. Its processes failed

to map one-to-one with organizational processes which are depended on


53

many factors including application domain(s) and organization structure and

size. Its measurement behaviour is, in practice, easy to recognize but difficult

to develop. CMMI has projected role as a tool for continuous improvement but

there is still need of the process tools for benchmark process area capability

and organizational maturity. There is no explicit requirement for the customer

focus, customer satisfaction and customer property. Also there is no

management representative for quality management and control of monitoring

and measuring devices. CMMI does not discuss about infrastructure like

building, work place and equipment (Pedreira .et al., 2007).

3.4 SOFTWARE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT & CAPABILITY DETERMINATION (SPICE)

Software Process Improvement Capability determination (SPICE) is

process assessment and process improvement model developed by the

telecommunication field process (Rout et al., 2007). . Beside the assessment

it is an effective and good driver for the process improvement. This purposed

standard provides the software development organization a tool to initiate and

sustain a continuous process improvement. Software development can be

aligned with and support the business needs of the organization. SPICE

provides the framework that defines all aspects of conducting assessments.

The process is examined by the assessment, which leads to capability

determination. Capability determination which identifies the capability and risk

of the processes. Process assessment also leads to processes improvement,

which identifies changes to the process (Rout et al., 2007).

The foremost thread of Software Process Improvement and Capability

determination (SPICE) is the assessment of a software process in context of a

structured process model that serves as yardstick. It is a project to support the

development, validation and transition into use of an International Standard

for software process assessment. The SPICE is a project of a joint Technical

Subcommittee between International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

and International Electro-technical Committee (IEC). The initial set of working

draft documents was developed by SPICE during 1993 to 1995 as a ballot

process. The first version, ISO/IEC TR 15504 of the SPICE was released as a


54

Technical Report in 1998. The SPICE efforts have resulted in the publication

of ISO/ICE 15504 in 2003-06 which is a five part standard for software

process assessment. (Rout et al, 2007) .SPICE provides a disciplined

technique to examine the processes used by organizations against a set of

criteria to determine the capability of those processes to perform within

quality, cost and schedule goals. The initial work of SPICE was focused on

interview technique to bring out evidence from practitioners about process

performance. The assessment results from interview technique had limited

use of documentary forms of evidence (Rout et al, 2007).

Generally SPICE provides the framework for the assessment of the

software processes. It can be used by the organizations for the following

purpose which involves the planning, managing, monitoring, controlling and

improving the acquisition, supply, development, operation, evolution and

support of software. It is used in two contexts, for process improvement and

the supplier evaluation. According to Habra et al., 2007 the most commonly

used models for software process improvement and assessment are CMMI

SM (SEI, 2002) and the ISO/IEC-15504, which is a standard of the

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (ISO/EC, 2006),

commonly known as SPICE.

This process assessment examines the organization processes to

determine whether they are efficient for achieving their goals. The

assessment characterizes the current practice in terms of capability of the

selected process. Its results are further used in the process improvement

activities or process capability determination by analyzing the result according

to the business need, identify strengths, weaknesses and the risks inherited

by the processes. This will lead to find out the output of the process whether

it’s achieving its goal, to identify significant cause of the poor quality, over

runs in time and cost. These will provide the ways to improve the processes.

The assessment includes the assessment process, model for assessment,

tools and success factors. For the successful assessment the assessor must

have suitable level of relevant skills like personal qualities, relevant education,


55

training, experience, management skills in capability assessment (Arent et

al., 2000 ).

The SPICE Model is European equivalent of CMMI used for the

purpose of software process capability assessment. CMMI is generic model

whereas SPICE is software oriented. SPICE Model is built on three process

pillars namely Process Improvement, Process Assessment and Process

Capability determination. Spice depicts five levels of process capability which

are similar to CMMI Maturity Levels namely Not Performed, Performed

Informally, Planned and Tracked, Defined, Quantitatively Controlled and

Continuously Improving levels. (White Paper, 2003)

The main purpose is to provide structured approach to the software

process assessment which involves the organization to improve its own

processes and to determine its capability for the particular requirement. Also

acquire to determine a supplier’s capability for particular requirement. The

SPICE component has nine parts and each part has its own task to perform in

order to determine the capability of the processes of the organization. These

are briefly explained below (Emam and Jung, 2001).

Part 1: Concepts and introductory guide

It is an entry point into SPICE. It guides to select and use of SPICE

parts and their requirements and applicability of assessment.

Part 2: A reference model for process and process capability

Defines two dimensional reference model that identifies a set of

processes in terms of their purpose and a framework for evaluating

capability of processes through assessment of process attribute

structured into capability levels. (ISO/IEC 15504) , (Jung, 2005)

Part 3: Performing an assessment

It defines a framework for conducting an assessment, and sets out the

basis for rating, scoring and profiling process capabilities, and how to

get reliable outcomes.


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Part 4: Guide to conducting assessment

It leads to select and use of an assessment model. It is generic for all

organizations that perform assessment using different methods and

tools.

Part 5: An assessment model and indicator guidance

It provides a prototype model for performing an assessment that is

compatible with reference model.

Part 6: Guide to competency to assessors

It describes the relevant competence, education, training and

experience of assessors.

Part 7: Guide for use in process improvement

It provides the guidance for process improvement by using results of

process assessment for the purposes of process improvement. It is

also supported by relevant case studies.

Part 8: Guide for use in determining supplier process capability

It provides the guidance for process capability determination by using

results of process assessment. . It addresses process capability

determination in both straightforward situations and in more complex

situations involving constructed or future capability. It is also supported

by relevant examples.

Part 9: Vocabulary

It is a consolidated vocabulary of all terms defined in SPICE. SPICE

defines a reference model (ISO/IEC 15504: Part 2) for process capability

determination. It is a two dimensional reference model enclosing both process

and capability. The associated software processes are classified into five

categories in process dimension and capability dimension comprises of 6

capability levels (0 – 5) indicating Process Attributes (PAs). PAs are


57

applicable to any process with measurable characteristics necessary to

manage a process and to improve its performance capability. “An ISO/IEC

15504 assessment is applied to an Organizational Unit (OU) (ISO/IEC 15504:

Part 9). An OU is the whole or part of an organization that owns and supports

the software process.” According to ISO/IEC 15504 (Part 2, 5), the capability

TABLE 2 OVERVIEW OF SPICE CAPABILITY LEVELS Capability Level Description of Capability Level and Process Area Level 0 There is general failure to attain the purpose of process. Incomplete Process

Level 1 Performed Process

Process Performance : The purpose of process is generally achieved without planning and tracking. There are identifiable input work products that testify to achieve output work products.

Level 2 Performance management: The performance of the process

is planned, tracked and managed. The process delivers work products of acceptable quality, conform to specified standards and objectives.

Managed Process

Work product management: Process performance is documented, managed and controlled to produce work products.

Level 3 Process definition: The process is performed and managed using a defined definition. Individual implementations of the process use approved, tailored version of standard and documented processes to achieve outcome.

Established process

Process resource: The extent to which processes utilize appropriate resources to deploy the processes in order to achieve out comes.

Level 4 Process Measurement: The process is quantitatively understood and controlled. Process performance is measured to achieve process and business goals. The detailed measures of performance are collected and analyzed continuously.

Predictable process

Process control: Extent to which process remains within control limits through continuous process measurement to achieve process and product goals.

Level 5 Process change: Change management process is controlled to achieve optimized Process performance to meet the business and process improvement goals.

Optimizing process

Continuous improvement: Extent to which changes to process are managed and controlled through continuous improvement to fulfil business goals of organization. Continuous process monitoring against defined goals is enabled by obtaining quantitative feedback and improvement and analysis of results.


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level of each process instance is determined by rating PAs. Table 1

elaborates the capability levels and process attributes. (Jung, 2005) and

(Emam and Jung, 2001).

Each PA is measured by an ordinal rating ‘F’ (Fully Achieved), ‘L’

(Largely Achieved), ‘P’ (Partially Achieved), or ‘N’ (Not Achieved) that

represents the extent of achievement of the attribute as defined in ISO/IEC

15504: Part 2. In the process dimension, the processes associated with

software are defined and classified into five categories known as the

Customer-Supplier (CUS), Engineering (ENG), Support (SUP), Management

(MAN), and Organization (ORG). The above dimensions of SPICE were

reported by (Jung, 2004), (Emam and Jung, 2001).

3.4.1 STRENGTHS OF SPICE

SPICE can be used to inform process improvement within a technology

organization. Process improvement is always difficult, and initiatives often fail,

so it is important to understand the initial baseline level, and to assess the

situation after an improvement project. SPICE provides a standard for

assessing the organization's capacity to deliver at each of these stages.

In particular, the reference framework of SPICE provides a structure for

defining objectives, which facilitates specific programmers to achieve these

objectives. Process improvement is the subject of part 7 of SPICE.

There are few benefits of the SPICE which include: (Emam and Jung,

2001).

For acquirers: An ability to determine the current and potential capability

of a supplier's software processes.

For suppliers: An ability to determine the current and potential capability

of their own software processes; An ability to define areas and priorities for

software process improvement; A framework that defines a road map for

software process improvement.


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For assessors: A framework that defines all aspects of conducting

assessments.

The techniques of assessment are flexible enough that SPICE can be

adopted by small and large organizations. Its techniques can be extended to

include the quantitative measures for monitoring improvement of processes.

The use of process assessment encourages the culture of constant

improvement and develops the proper ways to support that culture. SPICE

helps to meet business requirements by engineering the processes and

optimizes the resources. SPICE helps the organization to satisfy the

customer, minimize the full life time cost, and maximize the responsiveness to

customer and market requirements. Software suppliers only submit just one

process assessment scheme where as presently numerous schemes are

used. SPICE not only beats the change management for improvement but

also provides the process capability determination at every single process of

change effected in software process. SPICE provides the basis in the

organization to assess and evaluate their limited area of software

development. The organization has the tool to initiate and sustain a

continuous process improvement. The programme managers can ensure that

their software development is aligned and supported by the needs of the

organization. SPICE has taken the initiative to support small companies.

SPICE is supported by the international community (Jung, 2004), (Emam and

Jung, 2001).

3.4.2 WEAKNESSES OF SPICE

SPICE has some weaknesses too. These are:

SPICE is not the framework to set out the specific standards, it only

assesses the capability provided by the organization's defined process

definitions and management commitment. SPICE is not a methodology, it sets

out a list of activities but does not set out the order in which the activities

should be carried out. It is expensive and not readily available for

implementation. (Emam and Jung, 2001).


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3.5 PERSONAL SOFTWARE PROCESS

The employee’s personal skills and abilities to manage work crisis

largely determine the results of software development process. It is a

challenge for top management to improve personal performance of an

employee. The personal performance of an employee is very important

because the personnel’s cost constitutes 70 percent of the cost of software

development (Lakha, 1994). Personal Software Process (PSP) is a disciplined

and structured methodology to software development for an individual. It

evaluates the personnel skills and provides a regimented approach to improve

personnel performance. (Pomeroy-Huff et al., 2005) It edifies employees

about managing projects quality, make commitments they can meet, improve

planning abilities, how to define process, measure quality and productivity

and reduce defects in their products. PSP deals with individual employees.

According to Mike Grasso in a seminar, PSP can be applied to many parts of

the organization including small program development (SEI, 2010)b, (Hayes

1997) and (Grasso, 2005). Personal software processes can also be applied

to SME due to small size of the organization and small nature of the project

that are usually done in SME.

The Personal Software Process (PSP), is a product of SEI developed

by Watts Humphrey. This methodology is meant to bring discipline,

consistency and efficiency into software project development for achieving

high quality product output in a small program development environment. It

helps the IT practitioners to manage quality at work place and make capable

commitments for project deadlines that they can meet (Ferguson et al., 1997).

According to Pomeroy-Huff et al. (2009) PSP follows a process level hierarchy

namely Planning, Design, Code, Testing and Post-mortem.


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TABLE 3 PSP Process Hierarchy

3.6 TEAM SOFTWARE PROCESS

The Team Software Process (TSP), developed at the SEI, is designed to

facilitate superior performance of software development teams in SMEs. The

TSP along with the Personal Process Software (PSP) helps the high

performance engineer to ensure quality software products and improve

process management in an organization. TSP uses integrated team concept

with 3-20 engineers to develop software intensive products. An organization

using TSP can built self directed teams that can plan their processes and

track their established goals, and own their processes and plans (SEI, 2010)b.

According to Ferguson and Kitson (1997) the TSP is a methodology that helps

organizations implement processes and best practices at the team and project

level. Both TSP and PSP have been successfully implemented for SPI in

small settings. It is used as supporting methodology for management,

planning and tracking activities. It covers most of the requirements of the

Quantitative Process Management (QPM) and Quality Management (QM)

KPAs of the CMM Maturity level-4. The usage of TSP as a foundation for

implementing the CMM in a small organization has shown that TSP makes

the CMM implementation easier. TSP has good coverage of the CMM at a

LEVEL PSP Description

O Not performed Current process are running on ad‐hoc basis

1 Planning

Define the process, create conceptual design, estimate product size, estimate resources and schedule of product development

2 Design & Review Design program, and implement design according to

developed schedule.

3 Code & Review Compile the program, , fix and log all the errors in the defect

log.

4 Testing

Test the program and fix and log all the defects found.

5 Post‐mortem

Record all the data in the project summary form including, time, defects and size on actual basis for comparison. Lessons documented for future


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project level. It has good coverage of CMM at team level. However if all teams

are exactly following the TSP, there are still many other uncovered

organizational aspects of CMM (Serrano et al., 2006). It is suggested by

Ferguson (1997) and Hayes (1997) that smaller organizations should consider

PSP and TSP models for process improvement.

According to Wall etal., (2005) CMMI is meant for building organizational

capability where as TSP and PSP represent a complimentary position to

support CMMI practices. TSP is for building self directed teams within an

organization and PSP framework is meant for building and transforming skills

and habits of individuals. Experiences of large body of evidence depict that

TSP addresses key goals of both Software CMM and CMMI, namely,

delivering high-quality software products, on time and within budgeted costs

(McAndrews, 2000). Furthermore, TSP processes in industry practices have

depicted a close correspondence to CMMI practices (McHale 05). TSP is

also efficient in staging software organizations to accelerate their

accomplishment of high maturity and good business performance (Pracchia,

2004 and Switzer, 2004).

3.7 SIX SIGMA

According to Basu and Wrightt, (2002) the goal of Six Sigma is to

increase profit by eliminating variability, defects and wastes and total

orientation towards customer satisfaction. Six sigma is a holistic approach

that integrates all organizational functions like staff, culture, quality system to

collectively strive towards continuous process improvement and achieving

virtual perfection. Stone (2006) defines Six Sigma as an effective method

which aims to reduction in variation, prevent defects and continuous

improvement towards achieving selected targets and goals. .


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TABLE 4 Structure of TSP

MATURITY LEVEL

TSP STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION

0 Not performed Ad‐hoc based current processes

1 Launch

Review Project Objectives, prepare customer needs policy, define TSP team structure, assign team roles and establish goals

2 Define Strategy

Create product conceptual design, define development strategy and decide what will be produced in each TSP cycle. Prepare project size and effort man hour estimates, configuration management plan and risk management and monitoring plan.

3 Plan

Estimate the size of software artifacts like , SRS, UAT, code etc. Establish Software development plan, and allocate weekly tasks to team. Prepare a Quality management Plan.

4 Requirement & Design

Develop functional and non functional specifications according to customer needs. Review the requirements and develop user acceptance test plan for the system. Create functional and non functional design and review the design as per requirements. Prepare an integrated system test plan

5 Implement

Use PSP to implement modular components. Prepare a detailed modular design and review the design. Implement the design by coding and review the code. Compile and test each module and assess the quality of each module.

6 Test Develop integrated system testing plan and carry out system testing. Generate user documentation.

7 Postmortem

Conduct Postmortem analysis and prepare summary for each TSP cycle. Generate peer review and team evaluation reports.

References: (William. 2009) & (Humphrey, 2000)

Six Sigma Metric level is for measuring defects and improving quality;

and a methodology to reduce defects levels below 3.4 Defects per (one)

Million opportunities (DPMO). According to Harry Mikel (1988) Six Sigma

methods ensure processes to produce output within specification. With the

help of Six Sigma method processes can reduce below than 3.4 defects per

million opportunities. Six Sigma makes the organisation more goal oriented

and aggressive towards quality objectives.

The fundamental objective of Six Sigma is implementation of a

measurement-based strategy that focuses on process implementation and


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variation reduction through the application of Six Sigma improvement projects.

According to Stone (2006) Six Sigma is implemented with DMAIC

methodology which is a formal analytical system for incremental and

continuous process improvement. It is an innovative, systematic, and close

loop measurement process that eliminates unproductive steps. It has basically

five phases (define measure, analyze, improve and control).

1. DEFINE: Involves team charter, process mapping and total focus on

customer needs and expectations

2. MEASURE: It is based on data collection, process measurement and

control of process performance variation.

3. ANALYSE: It is based on data analysis, process analysis and customer

focus. Performance of all artefacts is compared with standards, is

quantified for goal refinement.

4. IMPROVE: Problem solutions and alternatives are generated and

optimized solution is selected through regression. Solution is implemented

by first preparing an implementation plan and doing pilot testing.

5. CONTROL: All the processes are monitored and documented. Good

practices are institutionalized throughout the organization. Post-mortem

summary report prepared for future implementation.

3.8 BRIEF COMPARISON SOFTWARE QUALITY STANDARDS

In the following section a brief comparison between ISO and CMM,

CMM and CMMI and ISO and CMM is provided.

3.8.1 ISO AND CMM

This ISO standard has many versions for the software industry and

they are still improving their standard according to the new needs of the

organizational cultures. The ISO 9001 has given the less emphasis on the

processes in the organization although its focus has been to develop quality

product. The CMM in contrast has emphasis on the process improvement and

also in the continuous manner. The ISO 9001 emphasizes more on product

engineering and the hardware whereas CMM deals with the development of


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the software processes. ISO 9001 does not need detailed documentation

during different phases of the processes in the organization. On the other

hand the CMM requires detailed documentation for the processes.

The CMM is more suitable for the development of the quality product

and quality improvement in the standard of the organization. CMM still has

limitations that it cannot be fully implemented in the SME due to requirement

of more resources for documentation which makes the implementation more

costly as compared to ISO 9000 certification. ISO 9000 model addresses

minimal criteria to establish a Quality Management System (QMS), where as

CMM has a detailed approach to address to quality improvement paradigm. It

can be said that every KPA of CMM is weakly related to ISO 9000 to some

extent (Paulk, 2005). There are strong correlations between IS0 9001 and

CMM level 2, specifically in relation to process quality improvement .and

transition from CMM to ISO 9000 is possible without disturbing the integrity of

the ISO 9000 certified organization. This transition can be accomplished in

easy five steps namely Establish Software Engineering Process Group,

Perform Gap Analysis, Make a Plan, Provide Training and Establish Metrics

Program ( McGuire and McKeowen. 2001) It can still be argued that spirit of

TQM culture is not found in the practices. May be this issue will be addressed

in the latter additions of these models.

3.8.2 CMM AND CMMI

Both Software CMM and CMMI models are based on the pretext that

organization will follow process improvement journey in small incremental

steps rather than bringing radical change through large scale sweeping

changes. Quality improvement through reengineering can be bought through

department wise small evolutionary steps and by repeating small wins

successively across the organization (Wall et al., 2005). As asserted by Paulk

et al., (1993) that software CMM and CMMI (staged) quality improvement

models provide a baseline for incremental SPI by defining five maturity levels

that lay down a framework with measurement and assessment criteria for an

organization’s software process maturity and for assessing its SPI capability.


66

Each of the five levels is composed of a set of KPA with component goals and

practices, that, when satisfied, provide considerable improvement in

organization’s software processes. CMMI continuous grants freedom in

improving only those process areas which are critical for organization to

improve and mitigate the risk where as CMM has a defined path for over all

organizational improvement. CMMI Continuous enables increased foresight

into process area capability improvement where as CMM focuses on set of

processes to achieve SPI by defined Maturity Levels. CMMI allows

improvement in different processes at different rates and gives cost and time

flexibility to organization where as CMM controls the pace of improvement

based on maturity level. CMM and CMMI both are supported by case studies

and data that they promote Return on Investment (CMMI team, 2006).

According to (Paulk, 2004) CMM is a logical approach and common

sense for Software engineering and quality improvement practices. Software

engineering should be done to achieve business and organizational goals one

should not get into the debate that which model is better.

3.8.3 ISO AND CMMI

Though CMMI seems similar to the ISO9001 as both are the

international standards for effective quality system for development and

maintenance but the ISO 9000: 2000 is an abstract document and can be

applied to any organization in Software Industry. For every clause in ISO an

organisation can choose to have a status “satisfied” or “not satisfied”. If an

organisation satisfies minimal acceptance quality level for the software

processes (clauses) then organization is considered ISO certified. While

CMMI establishes a framework for measuring continuous process

improvement and is more complex and integrated in nature. CMMI has two

presentations staged and continuous. CMMI Staged represents maturity

levels of an organization from 1-5 and is suitable for organizations who

choose to work on general process improvement. CMMI Continuous each

process capability level ranges from level 0-5 and is suitable for those

organizations who want to choose specific processes for improvement in


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order to meet their business goals. (Yoo. et al, 2004). CMMI is detailed than

ISO 9000: 2000 and provides 25 process areas (standard practices) for

continuous quality improvement. (Hence we concluded that the CMMI is

better than both the ISO 9001 and the CMM. Further according to Yoo et al.,

(2004) ISO 9001:1994 certified IT firms can satisfy majority of the level-2 and

most of the CMMI Maturity level-3 PAs. In another study to integrate ISO 9000

and CMMI, it is claimed that integrated model will be helpful to ISO certified

firms to transit to CMMI without doing redundant efforts. According to Paulk

etal., (1995) many companies are expected to move towards CMM and CMMI

framework . It is only possible if SEI establishes official guidelines for such

transition from ISO to CMMI. According to feedback during study conducted

by SEI based on 52 companies it was found that trainings of CMMI are very

abstract for small organizations to understand and adopt. Cost of trainings

and CMMI certification is a biggest hindrance for ISO to CMMI transition (

CMMI Product Team, 2009).

3.8.4 SPICE AND CMM

SPICE is more effective than all the other international standards. The

reason for this is that the SPICE shares references from many international

standards like SW-CMM (SEI), ISO 9000 and Trillium (TL 9000) (Sheard,

2001).

ISO 9000 uses the pass/fail characteristics of the quality audits while

the SPICE uses the process assessment to assess and evaluate the

capability on processes in a continual manner. SPICE provides the

opportunity to adjust the scope of assessment to cover specific processes of

interests rather than all the processes in the organization.

According to Emam and Jung (2001) SPICE framework evolved

through inheriting best references and practices from SW-CMM and the ISO

9000. SPICE is relatively effective in process assessment for continuous

improvement of the processes of the organizations including large and SME.

A survey to predict the viability of implementing SPICE in 53 firms across the

globe was done and majority of the respondents showed high confidence


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level and satisfaction about implementing SPICE (ISO/IESC 15504 ) up to

maturity level-3 (Emam and Jung, 2001).

3.9 PERFORMANCE OF PROCESS IMPROVEMENT MODELS IN SME

The following section discusses the implications of SME environment

and culture over acceptability of the models and their quality procedures and

practices. A brief comparison is given for each model and its viability in small

and medium size software houses.

3.9.1 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL (CMM) AND SME

The SW-CMM is chosen as the reference model for process improvement

and also using for planning and implementing the improvement actions in

SMEs. CMM is specifically developed to provide an orderly, disciplined

framework within the software management and engineering process issues

are addressed (Paulk et al., 1993). The CMM is also guiding the SPI

implementation efforts of SMEs. It solves and addresses some of the

problems of the so called software crisis. It is also considered a roadmap for

SPI in SMEs and it has a major influence in the software community around

the world (Serrano et al., 2006).

. One of the first challenges for small organizations in using the CMM is

that their primary business objective is to survive. Even after deciding the

status quo is unsatisfactory and process improvement will help, finding the

resources and assigning responsibility for process improvement, and then

following through by defining and deploying processes is a difficult business

decision (Mark C. Paulk et al., 1993). CMM does not address all of the

important issues for successful projects. It does not currently address

expertise in particular application domains, advocate specific software

technologies, or suggest how to select, hire, motivate, and retain competent

people. Although these issues are crucial to a project's success but they have

not been integrated into the CMM (Paulk et al., 1993).

Brodman and Johnson (1994) have developed a tailored version of the

CMM for small businesses, organizations, and projects. The CMM represents


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a “common sense engineering” approach to software process improvement.

Its maturity levels, key process areas, goals, and key practices have been

extensively discussed and reviewed within the software community. While the

CMM is neither perfect nor comprehensive, it does represent a broad

consensus of the software community and is a useful tool for guiding

improvement efforts, and it can be used to help small software organizations

improve their processes (Paulk et al.,, 1993).

A set of key process areas of CMM is used to supplement software and

process development in SME. These processes involve a focus on managing

the knowledge and technical capability rather than the traditional project

management. According to CMM, a focus on knowledge capability

management could be important for small, medium enterprises. Typically

these firms exist unstable because these enterprises are lack of financial

resources. SME mostly use those PAs of CMM which base on Knowledge

Management (KM) because the large firms are unable to stabilize the

knowledge management key process areas (Baskerville and Heje, 1999).

An early misperception of SW-CMM by some people was that it did not

apply to small organizations or projects. In order to illustrate its application to

small organizations, according to McAndrews, (2000) Humphrey took on the

challenge to apply the SW-CMM to the smallest organization possible: an

organization of a single individual. From 1989 to 1993, Humphrey wrote more

than 60 programs and more than 25,000 lines of code (LOC). In developing

these 60 programs, Humphrey used all of the applicable SW-CMM practices

up through Maturity Level 5. He concluded that the management principles

embodied in the SW-CMM were just as applicable to individual software

engineers. The resulting process was the Personal Software Process (PSP)”

(Davis and Mullaney, 2003). The TSP and PSP are used as prescriptive

processes to perform SPI initiative and for implementing the SW-CMM at the

individual and team level respectively (Oktaba et al., 2007).


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3.9.2 CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL INTEGRATION IN SME

The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process

improvement approach providing the essential elements of effective

processes. CMMI is also providing “a set of best practices that address

productivity, performance, costs, and stakeholder satisfaction.” The need for

process improvement and the expression of its benefits are proves in

businesses and organizations around the world. Years of research and

practice have demonstrated the competitive advantages of efficient and

effective work practices that increase the predictability and reduce the

variability of schedule and cost across the product/project lifecycle and

improve the quality of the products and services (CMMI, 2006), (Ferreira et

al., 2006).

CMMI is not readily usable by small organizations. It is much too

complicated and too expensive to implement. If CMMI appraisals appear

appropriate, the large organizations with medium to higher maturity level can

undertake CMMI (Habra et al, 2007). It entails a substantial overhead for

small settings (Mondragon, 2006). “The CMMI in its current format and

packaging is not feasible for SMEs to adopt and implement” (Miluk, 2006).

The project management element appears burdensome for a small business

due to the numerous reviews and reporting requirements that are contained in

the model (Kelly, 2006). The usage of TSP as a foundation for implementing

the CMM in a small organization has shown that TSP makes the CMMI

implementation easier. TSP has good coverage of the CMMI at a project level

and team level. Even if all teams are exactly following the TSP, there are

many other uncovered organizational aspects of CMMI in small settings

(Serrano et al., 2006). According to Mondragon (2006) “A process

improvement (PI) project based on a comprehensive reference model such as

the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) requires additional effort and

time to interpret the model.” The SME have been adopting staged

representation of CMMI are pursuing Maturity level 2 of CMMI. CMMI is not

completely compatible for small, medium enterprises but these enterprises


71

struggle to get the right fit. Most of the SMEs are trying to get at least Level-2

of CMMI (Serrano et al., 2006).

At certain instance, the CMMI is helpful for finding relevant audience

because small and medium enterprises lack people, resources and skills of

advertisement. At least 3 CMMI process areas are exercised in a small

company. SME mostly communicating among 5 employees for which CMMI

provides a best practices framework that can help in decision making about

what and how to explicitly define, communicate, and improve (Ferreira et al.,

2007).

An easier way to undertake CMMI can be made by providing guidelines

to adopt and implement the essence of CMMI process areas for very small

settings. There should be supported templates, online help and CMMI

consultant to perform the self-assessments (Mondragon, 2006) If the barriers

to implementation of the model can be evaluated and eliminated, it would

result in reduction of cycle time and cost of implementation (Gene Kelly,

2006).The CMMI continuous representations endows with a collection of

independent solutions from which an SME can chose to implement certain

pieces based on its needs. “The CMMI performance measures should be

designed to provide comprehensive and reliable benchmark data on the

efficacy of the organization’s systems development capability” ( Miluk, 2006).

The main purpose is using CMMI in SMEs is to establish a process

improvement roadmap upon which a route can be drawn from “where we are

today” to “where we want to be”. It is very helpful for improving organization’s

processes. It defines the characteristics of good processes and avoids

prescribing how the processes must be enacted. It also provides the ability to

manage the development, acquisition, and maintenance of products and

services. It is focused on the total-system problem, troubles, unlike other

predecessor CMMs. It provides facilities for enterprise-wide process

improvement, unlike single-discipline model (Ferreira et al., 2007).


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3.9.3 INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS ORGANIZATION (ISO) IN SME

ISO 9001 has been adopted as a process model by over 40,000

certified companies in the US. The main purpose using ISO is the need to

leverage investments where possible. But the ISO is difficult to apply for

Small, Medium Enterprises. The main reason is that the ISO 9001 compliance

is estimated at almost $25,000 in training, external audits, and registration

costs, but SMEs lack recourses and cannot fulfil all of the ISO model

requirements. If ISO is to be adopted by SMEs than it may be divide into the

parts. According to the Mexican industry the ISO 9000:2001 is proper for

small and medium-sized enterprises with low maturity levels (Gene Kelly,

2006).

According to Gene Kelly (2006) ISO international standards are hard

to apply in the small projects, small organizations and companies that have

employees in between 1 and 25 employees. The ISO standards are not

explicitly address the needs of SMEs and the ISO standards are not easily

apply on in Small settings because the compliance with those standards is

difficult, if not impossible, for small settings to achieve them.

The observance requirements of the ISO 9001:2000 standard is

mapped to one or a combination of quality management principles (QMPs) on

which the standard is based. These principles are grouped as soft and hard

and ranked in terms of the number of compliance requirements they

represent.

In the SMEs, the compliance requirements of the ISO 9001:2000

standard stress more on the “hard” factors. The TQM (total Quality

Management) and SPI (Software Process Improvement) are also very

important factors in the ISO model.


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3.9.4 SUMMARY

Discussion on the leading quality models for implementation of quality

improvement practices in the local industry has been presented in the

chapter. The models under discussion are ISO 9001, CMM, CMMI, SPICE ,

PSP and TSP. The ISO 9001 consists of five key process areas namely QMS,

management responsibility, resource management, product realization and

measurement and analysis. Strengths of ISO 9001 include flexibility, relatively

lower cost and faster to implement as compared to other models. It has low

training costs and may be more appropriate for medium sized SME. However

it lacks guidance to implement in very small enterprises in IT industry and

SMSH. On the implementation side there is a gap in domain knowledge

among consultants about IT and among IT practitioners concerning Quality

philosophy, which leads to anomalies. Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a

product of SEI developed to guide an organization’s software processes to

maturity. It has five maturity levels namely Initial, Repeatable, Defined,

Managed and Optimized. CMM is suitable for large organizations but is also

expensive to implement and takes more than 3 years for a firm to reach

maturity level five on the average. CMM tells what to do but it fails to tell us

how to do it, as It lacks guidelines and trainings to implement it in SMSH.

Many practitioners indicate that CMM does point out weaker processes but it

fails to concentrate on product characteristics. SEI later introduced CMMI, the

next generation quality framework, more flexible and disciplined to replace

CMM. CMM is template oriented and encourages process improvement

throughout the organization. CMMI is an integrated model based on

assessment and consulting and it is known to implement more robust and

highly-mature quality practices. On the other side CMMI is only fit for large

scale projects and its trainings are very expensive and very abstract. One

really needs to be creative to understand implementation of CMMI. Custom

trainings are needed to be developed for SMEs to make CMMI

implementation more effective. CMMI is flexible and organizations assessed

at Maturity Level 2 can do transition to ISO 9000 without much difficulty and

vice versa. In the last section SPICE process improvement paradigm is


74

discussed which helps to align business processes towards the needs of

organization. SPICE is not only process capability determination technique,

but it also assesses risks due to process changes and improvements. The

PSP and TSP are software development processes for individuals and teams

respectively. In the end a comparison of these quality models is given in the

context of their implementation in SME. It can be ascertained that ISO 9000,

TSP and PSP are more suitable process models for SMEs provided SMEs

top management is committed towards quality as a culture and adopt long

term quality planning in the tune of TQM philosophy.

The analysis of literature review has revealed some gaps for quality

practices pertaining to implementing quality models in local software industry.

The following set of guidelines are presented to fulfil these gaps and enhance

the performance of local SMSH.

Leading models like CMM and CMMI are designed to suit requirements

of large organizations and they are not recommended to be fit for SMSH.

These models are abstract and the cost of trainings and implementation of

CMM and CMMI is very high. These models require extra resources and take

a duration of more than 3 years to achieve optimum maturity level. SPICE is

an assessment framework also meant for large organizations and it is not a

Quality Management System (QMS) framework that can be fit for SMSH. ISO

9000 and PSP/TSP are more appropriate for SME adoption as these models

are more flexible, low cost and easy to implement. ISO 9000 is a process

centric framework and gets implemented in short duration of 3 to 6 months. IT

practitioners should be trained to develop quality concepts as literature review

reveals that there is lack of awareness about quality philosophy and domain

knowledge among IT practitioners. All processes should be spiritually followed

so that organization is able to deliver quality software products. Top

management should assure long term commitment towards CPI and optimum

resource allocation for training and quality assurance. TQM culture is not

found in these models therefore TQM should be made part of SPI activities to


75

reduce schedule delays, cost over runs, and rework costs and to assure true

quality culture in local IT industry.

Chapter 4 Methodology

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CHAPTER 4- METHODOLOGY

This chapter discusses the Research Process that how the study was

carried out. It provides detail about Research Design, and how Questionnaire

was developed, pretested and the survey was administered..

4.1 RESEARCH DESIGN AND QUESTIONNAIRE

Questionnaire was developed to get the information about the process

improvement and quality management practices being followed by the local

software industry of Pakistan. Initially the questionnaire was pretested in a

small sample of 30 respondents in 2007 in Lahore. It provided the initial

information that helped to narrow down the scope of research. It also gave an

insight into the local industry quality improvement practices. These measures

were then converted into performance level indicators. Then by following a

systematic approach corresponding to each measure and indicator, a

question was designed. The questionnaire was simply derived by developing

Performance measures and practices from ISO-9000 and CMM quality

models and practices. The questions were formulated with a purpose to depict

the level of understanding and implementation of quality standards among

SMSH. It is similar questionnaire design technique that Black and Porter

(1996) followed to developed TQM constructs by using Malcolm Baldrige

National Quality Award criteria (MBNQA), and that Quazi and Padibjo (1998)

used to design questionnaire based on Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award

criteria in Singapore. A five point likert’s scale is used for the data collection.

The scaling of levels in the questionnaire is: lowest value = (1) and highest

value = (5) where as middle value =3 which is considered as neutral. Copy of

the questionnaire is attached in APPENDIX-A. Copy of the questionnaire

indicators is attached in APPENDIX-B. Mapping of the questionnaire

indicators with ISO 9000 is shown in APPENDIX-C.


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4.1 TESTING AND DEBUGGING-PILOT STUDY

In the pilot study questionnaire explores process maturity, size

estimation of organization, resource allocation, project scheduling, project

tracking, configuration management, and quantitative process measurement

which are all key practices and process areas taken from CMM (SEI) and

(ISO 9001: 2008)E (ISO, 2010). After data analysis of pilot study and

feedback from quality experts questionnaire was tailored and restructured to

improve its reliability and relevance to quality management and improvement

as recommended by Yusof, (1999). A few of questions were added and

revised as per the reviewer comments from industry experts and three faculty

members from the Institute of Quality and Technology Management (IQTM),

University of Punjab, Lahore. The final copy of the questionnaire version 3.2 is

given in Appendix A. It is a two page questionnaire having 8 quality

constructs and a total of 47 question statements. A request letter from the

researcher including information about questionnaire is also developed, which

is attached with the questionnaire (Appendix A).

4.2 INDICATORS

The questions from the survey questionnaire are used to find out the

indicators. Indicators are quantitative measures of key attributes of the

practices of institutions and their component units (Cave et al., 1988).

Indicator is a victim measurement area about which we ask questions.

Indicators help in identifying the measures in the organization. Each question

must have an indicator. One question may have more than one indicator.

These indicators become variables for statistical analysis and also for

developing metrics for measuring quality improvement and performance. The

list of performance indicators is given in Appendix-C.

4.3 QUALITY CONSTRUCTS

Different researchers have attempted to investigate the quality

constructs in TQM with various rationale and objectives. Saraph et al’s (1989)

main rationale was to develop a data collection tool to measure quality


78

management practices of companies. Black and Porter (1996) developed their

quality constructs from MBNQA criteria, on the pretext that MBNQA is a well

recognized and established quality framework. Tamimi and Gershon (1995)

also developed a data collection tool by following Deming’s fourteen points’

Critical Success Factors (CSF). Ahire et al (1996) proposed a validation

instrument based on 12 quality implementation constructs to measure quality

management practices for manufacturing industry. These constructs were

derived from literature review. Similarly Dutta et al.’s (1998) study designed a

data collection instrument for a European study based on quality assessment

models like CMM, SPICE and Bootstrap. According to these studies on quality

constructs the authors tried to systematically present CSF to measure Quality

management and to address the problems faced during TQM adoption

process.

For this study quality constructs were developed and finalised by

analysing ISO 9000, CMM and TQM quality practices through literature review

and questionnaire design. The indicators developed during questionnaire

design were grouped into eight quality dimensions (constructs) based on

literature review, feedback from pilot study and reviewer comments from

IQTM department faculty members. Similarly following constructs in TABLE 5

were developed from ISO 9000, CMM and TQM standard practices.

Appendix D gives a list of indicators corresponding to each of these

constructs.

TABLE 5 CONSTRUCTS TABLE

NO. CONSTRUCTS OF QUESTIONNAIRE

ABBREVIATION EXPLAINATION

1. STRUCTURE OSS Organization Size & Structure 2. CULTURE OCL Organization Culture3. QUALITY OBQ Organization Behaviour Towards Quality 4. REQUIREMENT

MANAGEMENT RDM Requirement Development Management

5. PLANNING PPL Project Planning6. MONITORING PMC Project Monitoring Tracking 7. MEASUREMENT MAN Measurement & Analysis

8. IMPROVEMENT PQI Process / Quality Improvement


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4.4 RELIABILITY

The reliability of the data is determined from practical considerations.

The questionnaire was pretested during the pilot study in order to remove

ambiguities, replication of questions and research rationale. Purpose and

objectives were clearly stated in the cover letter from the researcher. Data

was collected through multiple channels and sources to get accurate and

complete unbiased sample, as emphasized by (Stake, 2005). Data quality

was checked statistically to filter the questionnaires which were skewed at

extremes. Partially filled questionnaires were left out of the analysis. During

field visits decorum and manners were insured to develop the interest of the

participants so that they are not bored (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) and (Stake,

2005). In order to ensure confidentiality of the respondents as advised by

Patton, (2002) respondents were reminded not to fill name or email address.

Assurances were also given to respondents about confidentiality and

anonymity (Cohen and Manion, 2000). In order to further clarify the concepts

and interpretations, all questions were pre-tested by discussing them with

several IT Professionals, in an attempt to eliminate biases of ambiguity

(Elphinstone, 1990).

4.5 THEORATICAL FRAMEWORK FOR DEPENDENT VARIABLE

To find out that what are the most significant best practices that effect

SPI so that a set of minimal practices for the local software industry can be

proposed as a SPI paradigm for implementation of quality, a framework

shown in FIGURE 4 was proposed. In this framework SPI constructs are

obtained from research design that included a detailed process to develop a

questionnaire for this study. These constructs were then finalised after pilot

study. Process Quality Improvement (PQI) is the dependent variable and all

other constructs are independent variables.


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FIGURE 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

4.6 SURVEY ADMINISTRATION

For the purpose of data collection necessary measures were used to

pilot test data collection tools to ensure accuracy, relevance and reliability for

quality of data. IT practitioners working in software houses who were the

members of Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) or Pakistan Software

House Association (PASHA) and IT practitioners working in companies that

are registered with ROZEE, (2010) were contacted for survey. The exercise to

implement survey was conducted through following sampling technique.

4.6.1 SAMPLING PROCEDURE

A systematic random sampling technique was adopted to collect the

sample. A list of 1031 software houses was compiled by collecting names and

emails of the companies which were registered with PASHA, PSEB and

www.rozee.com.pk (ROZEE, 2010) A small sampling interval of n=3 was chosen to

attain maximum population. Systematic sampling tolerates better

representativeness as compared to simple random sampling, assuming that

there is no cyclic pattern in the distribution list. Through systematic random

sampling technique good geographical distribution according to population

PROCESS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

QUALITY BEHAVIOUR

REQUIREMENT

PLANNING

MONITORING

MEASUREMENT

STRUCTURE

CULTURE


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density is achieved ( Iwan Ariawa, 1998). It was insured that there were no

duplicate names or emails in the list and it was not an ordered list. A

systematic sample was drawn by selecting every 3rd name from the list and a

sample was compiled of 343 names in first run. Following the same technique

229 and 153 names were selected in the second and third rounds of

systematic selection. In order to improve the response rate the respondents

were also given option to fill out the questionnaire placed online at

www.tecnologiz.com/quality (Sheraz, 2010). A total of 725 questionnaires

were administered on local IT practitioners through mail. The response rate

through mail was 19.8%, 144 out of 725 of the respondents filled out complete

questionnaires.

To further improve the response rate data collection was also administered in

person. As an additional effort during the period of last six months more than

90 software houses from the compiled sample list were approached from time

to time. A telephonic appointment was taken before approaching the software

houses. The response was quite encouraging from the lower management but

response from the top management was poor. Majority of the respondents

showed keen interest and answered the questions very carefully. These

interviews helped a lot to find out the attitude and concern of the organizations

about quality improvement. The response rate was fairly good and 83

completed questionnaires were achieved. The total number of questionnaires

completed for the study was 227, and over all response rate of 31.3% was

achieved.

4.6.2 POPULATI ON SAMPLE

In empirical studies it is important to select an unbiased sample and

hence an unbiased response (Salant and Dillman, 1994). A systematic

random sampling technique was used for this study. In order to choose

representative population for the research on Pakistan software industry

companies registered with Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB), Pakistan

Software Houses Association (PASHA) and IT companies registered at

www.rozee.com (ROZEE, 2010) were selected. Most of the respondents


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were from four biggest metropolitan cities of Pakistan namely Lahore,

Karachi, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Altogether, the total number of software

houses situated in these four cities represents approximately more than 80%

of the software industry in the country. Examining the response from the IT

practitioners working in these organizations, who represent the target

population sample, is expected to help us to produce information about the

general nature of sample population characteristics.

4.6.3 SAMPLE SIZE DETERMINATION

The optimum sample size determination technique is taken from

Lwanga, S.K. et al, (1991). According to this formula the calculated minimum

sample size for this study comes out to be 199, therefore sample size of 227

completed questionnaires obtained for this study is justified.

Equation:

Where

z = 3.84 at 95% confidence Interval (CI) P = 0.2, proportion of anticipated study population N = 1031, Population Size, d= 0 .05 absolute precision (spread+_ 5 %)

4.7 DATA ANALYSIS

In order to do data analysis frequencies were generated for indicator

variables, and measures of central tendency, Mean, Median, Mode were

calculated for numerical variables where applicable. For Inference: Chi Sq

was applied to generate inference for categorical variables was applied and

students t-test for continuous variables where applicable. Model was

generated using linear regression and structure equation modelling (SEM).


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Data was presented using Statistical Package for System Simulation (SPSS)

version 1.6 generated values in the form of figures and tables.

4.8 STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING In order to further test the model fitness Structural Equation Modelling (SEM)

technique was applied A specialized statistical software called Analysis of

Moment Structures (AMOS) was used to further refine the model through

empirical analysis to come up with an optimum SPI paradigm. SEM basically

describes relationship between variables. SEM technique is similar to

regression modelling and factor analysis and is effective in a way for

removing multi-co-linearity in the model. AMOS has a graphical interface .and

is an excellent tool to use for SEM model fitting (Wei, 2009). A framework of

structural modelling is given in FIGURE 5. Discussion on empirical analysis

and SEM is given in CHAPTER 6 ANALYSIS AND .


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FIGURE 5 THEORATICAL STRUCTURAL MODELING


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4.9 SUMMARY

The chapter describes how the data collection instrument was

designed and how it went through a pilot testing to further increase its

reliability, and subsequent development of final quality constructs. Survey

administration section discusses in detail the considerations regarding

population sample selection and systematic random sampling. In the last

section theoretical frameworks for regression modelling and structure

equation modelling (SEM) are proposed. The next chapter gives the

descriptive results.

Chapter 5 Descriptive Results

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CHAPTER 5 DISCRIPTIVE RESULTS

In this chapter descriptive results are reported from the statistical

analysis that was conducted on the data collected through the questionnaire

implemented to determine the nature of local software process improvement

practices in the SMSHs. The data was mainly collected from the four main

metropolitan cities of Pakistan namely Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and

Rawalpindi. Total number of (227) completely filled questionnaires were

received from respondents, who were IT practitioners working in the local

software industry. Likert’s scale was implemented in the data collection

instrument. The results were divided into 8 sections according to the

constructs and percentage frequencies answered by respondents against

each indicator were reported as results in this chapter. The reported

percentage in text is based on the following criteria. The likert’s scale values

corresponding to 1 and 2 are accumulated to represent “LOW”, and likert’s

scale values corresponding to 4 and 5 are accumulated to represent “HIGH”

as both concepts either give negation or acceptance of indicator. The

perceptions of IT practitioners working in the local software industry are

presented in the following section..

5.1 FREQUENCY ANALYSIS

In this section, percentage frequency and simple frequency of

responses against each item in the questionnaire based on eight quality

constructs have been presented from TABLE 6 to TABLE 13. These percentages

have been discussed to check the perception level of each quality assurance

practice in local software houses. Total numbers of Indicators included in the

descriptive results were 47 according to the items statements presented to

respondents through the questionnaire. Results are reported through negation

and acceptance of respondent’s perception for indicators where applicable.


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5.8 ORGANIZATION SIZE & STRUCTURE

TABLE 6 ORGANIZATION SIZE & STRUCTURE

(LOW) 1 2 3 4 (HIGH) 5

SIZ Size 171 (75.3 ) 13 (5.7 ) 6 (2.6 ) 12 (5.3 ) 25 (11.0 )

TND Technology/R&D 65 (28.6 ) 72 (31.7 ) 38 (16.7 ) 17 (7.5 ) 35 (15.4 )

STA Statistician 117 (51.5 ) 50 (22.0 ) 24 (10.6 ) 25 (11.0 ) 11 (4.8 )

OST ORG Structure 17 (7.5 ) 14 (6.2 ) 63 (27.8 ) 72 (31.7 ) 61 (26.9 )

RTN Retention 13 (5.7 ) 26 (11.5 ) 66 (29.1 ) 65 (28.6 ) 57 (25.1 )

The structure of organization means how organization has divided its

work or transactions into categories and subsequently these categories make

departments. The structure and environment defines the success needs of the

organization. Resources both human and structure are needed to be acquired

based on project requirements. TABLE 6 shows that 75.3% of the companies

have employees less than 50 where as 81% of the companies have

employees less than 200, hence indicating that large number of software

houses fall in the category of small and medium enterprises.

TABLE 6 shows that 60.3% of the companies do not have separate R&D

department and budget allocation for such activity. Similarly 73.5% companies

have no or little expertise for data analysis.. It is one of the causes of low

quality. It is recommended approach is that SME should employee technology

specialist for research and development to explore new technologies and

product ideas. SMEs should also have statisticians who should develop

trends and forecasts for organizational performance, process performance

and business performance. As said by Deming (1985) if “you cannot measure,

you cannot control”.

Our survey reveals that 58.6% of the local software houses agree on

more than 3 levels of management. The survey also indicates that 53.7% of

the companies try to higher employees on long term basis and try to retain

them.


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5.9 ORGANIZATION CULTURE

TABLE 7 ORGANIZATION CULTURE

(LOW) 1 2 3 4 (HIGH) 5

OVT Overtime 39 (17.2 ) 29 (12.8 ) 52 (22.9 ) 48 (21.1 ) 59 (26.0 )

SHD Scheduling 10 (4.4 ) 33 (14.5 ) 78 (34.4 ) 70 (30.8 ) 36 (15.9 )

LRN Learning 13 (5.7 ) 37 (16.3 ) 56 (24.7 ) 94 (41.4 ) 27 (11.9 )

COM Communication 12 (5.3 ) 35 (15.4 ) 62 (27.3 ) 77 (33.9 ) 41 (18.1 )

TM Time Management 12 (5.3 ) 26 (11.5 ) 73 (32.2 ) 73 (32.2 ) 43 (18.9 )

TRA Training 20 (8.8 ) 49 (21.6 ) 66 (29.1 ) 52 (22.9 ) 40 (17.6 )

TST Team Structure 29 (12.8 ) 46 (20.3 ) 77 (33.9 ) 48 (21.1 ) 27 (11.9 )

ASS Assessment 29 (12.8 ) 57 (25.1 ) 57 (25.1 ) 62 (27.3 ) 22 (9.7 )

The companies that offer overtime are (47.1%) as shown in TABLE 7.

This indicates the clash in time management and time scheduling. It also

indicates that there may be more than the employees, hence overt loading the

employees and creating stress and fatigue in the long run. Time scheduling is

critical to software development and timely project completion rate should be

optimum.

TABLE 7 also indicates that in 53.3% of the companies surveyed

learning is encouraged by the management and colleagues. Similarly 52% of

the companies top management allows freedom of speech. Freedom speech

and absence of communication barriers is good for a healthy and progressive

environment. The allocation of projects in teams highly appreciated in local

SMEs Internationally. According to the survey 51.1% of the companies

support proper allocation of tasks while 16.7% indicate that there is trivial task

allocation mechanism.

Literature review indicates that there is low interest of SME in

employee training and training plans (Montazemi, 2006), the reasons being

cost and available resources. According to our survey as indicated in TABLE 7

40.5% of the organizations show an interest in training programs and

establishing employee annual training schedules. The amount of effort

exerted in employee assessment has split result as 37% say assessment is


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done on the basis of employee performance while 37.9% survey respondents

agree that annual employee performance assessment is done without

ascertaining actual performance.

5.10 ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS QUALITY

TABLE 8 ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS QUALITY

(LOW) 1 2 3 4 (HIGH) 5

RA Resource Allocation 65 (28.6 ) 72 (31.7 ) 38 (16.7 ) 17 (7.5 ) 35 (15.4 )

TR Turnover Rate 117 (51.5 ) 50 (22.0 ) 24 (10.6 ) 25 (11.0 ) 11 (4.8 )

SQI Quality Improvement 17 (7.5 ) 14 (6.2 ) 63 (27.8 ) 72 (31.7 ) 61 (26.9 )

QA Quality Assurance 13 (5.7 ) 26 (11.5 ) 66 (29.1 ) 65 (28.6 ) 57 (25.1 )

MQA Management Approach 39 (17.2 ) 29 (12.8 ) 52 (22.9 ) 48 (21.1 ) 59 (26.0 )

TABLE 8 indicates that 60.3% of local IT companies would take

on a project even if sufficient resources are not available to take on a project.

The insufficient resources for quality management and projects are the major

causes of low quality in SME. 15.8% of the companies agree that their

turnover rate is high, whereas remaining 73.5% companies believe that their

turnover rate is reasonably low. Remaining responded neutrally. High

Turnover means people are not satisfied with the environment or

management policies of the company which in the long run leads to brain

drain and creates poor image of the company in the market. Companies

should take corrective actions to bring turnover rate to less than 3% annually.

TABLE 8 indicates that 58.6% of the local companies believe that quality can

be achieved by increased number of testing cycles which shows a poor

perception of quality on behalf of top management. It shows lack of quality

awareness and wrong approach towards quality improvement. Testing is an

overhead and it signifies that errors are inevitable or expected. Management

should look into preventive measures to stop inevitability of errors / bugs in


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software applications. Prevention approach is suggested by quality gurus and

that don’t remove the problems/errors but remove the causes of errors.

Survey results show the mixed attitude towards establishment of a

quality improvement program. Survey shows 13.7% of the companies have

established no quality plans, 58.6% have set up quality plans where as 27.8%

have shown neutral response as shown in TABLE 8. There is a serious need to

have awareness of QA in local companies in order to promote true quality

culture. The management approach towards quality is unsatisfactory as

indicated in TABLE 8 47.1% do not allow appropriate deadlines and adequate

resources and are reluctant to invest in hiring qualified quality resources and

try to look for cheap resources rather than quality experts.

5.11 REQUIREMENT DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT

TABLE 9 REQUIREMENT DEVELOPMENT & MANAGEMENT

(LOW) 1 2 3 4 (HIGH) 5

PR Project Review 36 (15.9 ) 46 (20.3 ) 55 (24.2 ) 62 (27.3 ) 28 (12.3 )

EST Effort Estimation 18 (7.9 ) 50 (22.0 ) 53 (23.3 ) 63 (27.8 ) 43 (18.9 )

CS Customer Satisfaction 20 (8.8 ) 57 (25.1 ) 69 (30.4 ) 65 (28.6 ) 16 (7.0 )

CM Change management 27 (11.9 ) 52 (22.9 ) 63 (27.8 ) 64 (28.2 ) 21 (9.3 )

OSR Out Sourcing 41 (18.1 ) 58 (25.6 ) 68 (30.0 ) 33 (14.5 ) 27 (11.9 )

A documented review process exists while moving project from one

stage to the other for 39.6% of the companies indicating that most of them are

using some kind of audit and review processes. As shown in TABLE 9 46.7% of

the companies follow some kind of documented procedure to estimate effort

and cost. As indicated in TABLE 9 35.6% of the companies report Increased

customer dissatisfaction due to misinterpretation of customer requirements

while 33.9% of the companies claim they have no requirement disputes.

Differences in requirement interpretation increases rework cost and

requirement change management overheads and may also delay the projects.

. The requirement change management practices reported by only 37.5%

which is low. The processes for sub contract management for out sourcing in


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the local industry are rarely practiced as reported by 43.7% as shown in

TABLE 9.

5.12 PLANNING

TABLE 10 PROJECT PLANNING

(LOW) 1 2 3 4 (HIGH) 5

CNF Conformance 39 (17.2 ) 51 (22.5 ) 51 (22.5 ) 42 (18.5 ) 44 (19.4 )

UAT Acceptance Testing 20 (8.8 ) 47 (20.7 ) 70 (30.8 ) 68 (30.0 ) 22 (9.7 )

PPL Project Planning 22 (9.7 ) 38 (16.7 ) 82 (36.1 ) 63 (27.8 ) 22 (9.7 )

RM Risk Management 19 (8.4 ) 53 (23.3 ) 77 (33.9 ) 55 (24.2 ) 23 (10.1 )

CSTD coding standards 20 (8.8 ) 36 (15.9 ) 59 (26.0 ) 70 (30.8 ) 42 (18.5 )

According to survey as shown in TABLE 10 39.7% of the companies

report that software errors do occur after the project is completed and handed

over to the client, where as 37.9% say that they do not have such problems of

non conformance after project delivery. On the other hand 39.7% agree that

User Acceptance Tests (UAT) are prepared before or during the design stage,

where as 29.5% say that UATs are not prepared at design stage. As shown in

TABLE 10 37.5% practitioners believe that Project development plan (PDP) is

strictly followed where as 26.4% say PDP is not fallowed because deadlines

are always postponed during the software development life cycle process.

As reported in TABLE 10 34.3% companies agree that project risk

management is practiced where as 31.7% are of the opinion that no risk

management evaluation and mitigation is practiced before the start of project.

Coding standard are mostly practiced by 49.3% where as 24.7% IT

practitioners do not follow any particular coding standards.


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5.13 MONITORING AND CONTROL

TABLE 11 PROJECT MONITORING TOOL

(LOW) 1 2 3 4 (HIGH) 5

AR Audits & review 21 (9.3 ) 41 (18.1 ) 52 (22.9 ) 81 (35.7 ) 32 (14.1 )

PM Project monitoring 17 (7.5 ) 50 (22.0 ) 63 (27.8 ) 66 (29.1 ) 31 (13.7 )

PT Project tracking 17 (7.5 ) 59 (26.0 ) 76 (33.5 ) 45 (19.8 ) 30 (13.2 )

PER Performance 38 (16.7 ) 53 (23.3 ) 56 (24.7 ) 58 (25.6 ) 22 (9.7 )

TW Team Work 32 (14.1 ) 62 (27.3 ) 55 (24.2 ) 43 (18.9 ) 35 (15.4 )

According to survey in TABLE 11 49.8% of respondents practiced

project monitoring and control audit reviews whereas 27.3% of companies do

not practice project monitoring and control audit reviews, and they do not

follow any standardize procedures. The variance in project plans is controlled

through change management and reorganized plans must not have any

chance of variance as 42.8% respondents admit that they consistently update

variation in their schedules and updated project plans. The plan monitoring

and tracking is reported low by 33.5% respondents as they don’t update plans

and consider it as just extra paper work and do not follow specified

procedures and standards spiritually whereas 33% respondents tract and

maintain different versions of project plans in order to facilitate timely delivery

and project control. Most of the organizations were able to understand CPI

and SPI and 35.3% claim to calculate these values including project earned

value whereas as indicated in TABLE 11 35.3% did not bother to calculate

process performance values. It is still unconvincing whether they have

knowledge of appropriate procedures to calculate CPI and SPI periodically.

Team culture is week as 34.3% (table-8) respondents agree that for any non

conformance individual accountability is more preferred by management and

like this shifting of responsibility on others is practiced.


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5.14 MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS

TABLE 12 MEASUREMENT & ANALYSIS

(LOW) 1 2 3 4 (HIGH) 5

PMR Process Measurement 17 (7.5 ) 43 (18.9 ) 72 (31.7 ) 66 (29.1 ) 29 (12.8 )

DCS Data Collection System 42 (18.5 ) 42 (18.5 ) 69 (30.4 ) 51 (22.5 ) 23 (10.1 )

PPR Process performance 33 (14.5 ) 43 (18.9 ) 79 (34.8 ) 50 (22.0 ) 22 (9.7 )

DL Defect log 21 (9.3 ) 56 (24.7 ) 61 (26.9 ) 46 (20.3 ) 43 (18.9 )

KBL Knowledge base Library 27 (11.9 ) 39 (17.2 ) 55 (24.2 ) 61 (26.9 ) 45 (19.8 )

As indicated in TABLE 12 nearly 41.9% of respondents mention that

organization practiced appropriate process performance measures and

documented the results, whereas 26.4% did not agree on and 31.7% were

neutral on this aspect.

For having data collection system (DCS) for measuring performance,

as 32.6% of respondents agreed that software houses do have DCS and

37% said that their companies did not practice data collection of performance

data. 30.4% have indicated neutral response. Majority of software houses are

unaware of performance measurement and how to use outcomes from

measurement results into process improvement as indicated in TABLE 12

31.7% organizations measure process efficiency and effectiveness for

process optimization and improvement, whereas 33.4% respondents

disagreed. Remaining 34.8% remained neutral.

For defect log maintenance and analysis 39.2% respondents said they

have organization wide data repository whereas 34% did not maintain defect

logs. The responses show a definite trend that no real data analysis is

practiced. Processes are not measured individually and there results are not

being utilized in process improvement.

Lessons learned from previous projects are shared with the rest of the

employees by 46.7% organizations and knowledge base library is maintained

for trend analysis, where as 29.1% said that lessons learned and mistakes are

not shared within the organization. Remaining 24.2% responded neutrally.


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5.15 PROCESS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

According to survey as shown in TABLE 13 58.1% of respondents agree that

management is willing to invest on hiring resources for quality assurance and

improvement. After quality improvement analysis management is quick at

taking corrective action as agreed by 52%., while 26% say that management

is slow in taking corrective action, and 22% replies were neutral. Nearly

41.6% respondents confirm that top management considers investing in

quality as a cost and 31.8% say that management does not take quality as a

cost burden. Management makes plans for quality improvement is supported

by 41.5% as shown in TABLE 13 whereas 31.7% say that management does

not make any efforts to develop and practice quality improvement plans.

Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) is practiced by 35.4% respondents

and 36.2% say that management does not practice CPI.

TABLE 13 PROCESS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

(LOW) 1 2 3 4 (HIGH) 5

RP Resource Planning 17 (7.5 ) 21 (9.3 ) 57 (25.1 ) 50 (22.0 ) 82 (36.1 )

CA PI Corrective Action 14 (6.2 ) 45 (19.8 ) 50 (22.0 ) 86 (37.9 ) 32 (14.1 )

TQM TQM 22 (9.7 ) 50 (22.1 ) 60 (26.5 ) 55 (24.3 ) 39 (17.3 )

QPL Quality Planning 18 (7.9 ) 54 (23.8 ) 61 (26.9 ) 58 (25.6 ) 36 (15.9 )

CPI CPI 41 (18.1 ) 41 (18.1 ) 64 (28.3 ) 57 (25.2 ) 23 (10.2 )

OCM Org Commitment 56 (24.7 ) 55 (24.2 ) 45 (19.8 ) 47 (20.7 ) 24 (10.6 )

SCM Software configuration Management 60 (26.4 ) 59 (26.0 ) 47 (20.7 ) 34 (15.0 ) 27 (11.9 )

SPI Process Improvement 46 (20.3 ) 61 (26.9 ) 52 (22.9 ) 45 (19.8 ) 23 (10.1 )

ML Maturity Level 5 (2.2 ) 27 (11.9 ) 66 (29.1 ) 70 (30.8 ) 59 (26.0 )

For management commitment for quality improvement and

process assessments as indicated in TABLE 13 48.9% of IT practitioners don’t

agree that management supports and allocates separate budget for quality

improvement whereas 31.3% agree that management does allocate funds for

quality improvement efforts. Mostly 52.4% of the organizations do not have

Knowledge Base Library (KBL) nor do they have configuration management

tool to maintain digital shared repository. 26.9% respondents agree that they


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do have KBL as shared repository and they do apply SCM practices. For

quality assurance and process improvement as indicated in TABLE 13 47.2%

companies do not have dedicated staff only for quality improvement and

29.9% of companies agree that they do have separate staff for QA to do

process tailoring and quality improvement of standard processes. For

assessment of maturity level as shown in TABLE 13 56.8% claim that their

maturity level is high, while 14.1% said that their maturity level with respect to

quality is low.

5.16 QUALITY MODELS PRACTICED IN LOCAL IT INDUSTRY

In order to ascertain the nature of quality practices and vision of

software industry a direct question was put in the survey that what kind of

quality model is being followed at your work space. 42% of respondents

selected ISO option which means that most of the companies are following

ISO Practices. It is interesting to notice as shown in TABLE 14 12% are

following CMM and 7% claimed to follow CMMI. Overall 35% of the

practitioners selected “Other” option which may be interpreted as that most of

them may be following other quality models or indigenous organizational

processes model approach. Only 4% reported using TSP/PSP for quality

management.

TABLE 14 QUALITY MODEL DEMOGRAPHICS

MODEL ISO CMM CMMI TSP/PSP OTHERS

PERCENTAGE 42% 12% 7% 4% 35%

5.17 RESPONDENT PROFILES

The data collection instrument was filled by IT practitioners working in the

local industry who were working at different levels of management like top,

middle and lower. The designation profile of respondents is given in TABLE 15.

The total sample size was 227 out of which 7% were filled by top

management, 39% filled by middle management and 54% questionnaires


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were completed by lower management. Detail of management groups is as

follows;

TABLE 15 RESPONDENT’S PROFILE GROUPS

TITLE PERCENTAGE DESIGNATION

TOP 7% CEO, Chairman

MIDDLE 39% Managers, Assistant (manager ,directors) Program Managers, Line Manager

LOWER 54% Software Engineer, Developers, Sys-Analyst, QA Person and Web developer

5.18 PROBLEMS AND ISSUES RAISED

According to research question 3: What are the problems and issues faced by the local practitioners to implement SPI quality practices?

Many comments received during the survey. A few respondents also filled

the comments section of the questionnaire as feedback. During the personal

visits enlightening discussions were held with IT practitioners.. Following is

the general idea of issues and problems raised regarding Software Quality

and top management in the local SMSHs.

Culture Gap: A fundamental problem was identified regarding culture

gap between software industry culture and manufacturing and service

industry culture. The later practice quality principles rigorously and all

employees are accounted for punctuality and production non

conformances. If the employees sit late they are given extra salary for

overtime. Whereas there is very little consideration for punctuality in

software industry and employees are made to sit late to complete

deliverables and iterations to meat poorly estimated client deadlines.

Software practitioners are not acknowledged and paid for such late

sittings and no over time is given. Local software practitioners should


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develop a quality culture where they should follow their written

processes religiously.

Documentation: The software industry blindly follows quality

processes much of time is wasted for documentation. The

management has not enough domain knowledge or have domain

experts to train in quality or practice quality excellence. Management

should follow a lean process measurement policy to only measure

critical process areas that need high supervision. A culture of

measuring everything does not promise to reveal productive results.

Quality Tools: There is no awareness and implementation of quality

tools among the management of SMSHs. Quality tools are available in

international market but their prices are so high that acquiring highly

expensive quality tools for SMSHs is not feasible due to their low

stream of cash flows. Secondly management considers quality as a

cost. SMSHs should develop separate budget for purchasing quality

tools or start developing indigenous tools for quality management and

start offering it as a product for local SMSHs.

Low Salaries: Majority of the IT practitioners also pointed out the

problem of low salaries which they were being offered in the local

industry. SMSHs fail to retain employees due to their short term

planning and policies. The high turnover rate in IT industry is due to

tough local competition among SMSHs. The salaries for senior

management are less as compared to salaries in manufacturing or

service industry when compared on long term basis. Later gives more

benefits like car and residence and tries to retain the employees for

long-term basis. One of the reason may be that most of the

manufacturing industrial zones are situated in remote locations.

Quality Check at End: The local SMSHs have a culture practice to

check quality of a software product at the end when it is completed.


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Any requirement changes or functional and non-functional non-

conformances lead to high change management costs which lead to

project delays, customer dissatisfaction and budget overruns. Such

projects do not remain profitable for SMSHs. Top management should

develop new quality philosophy and should develop a paradigm to

measure product quality throughout the software development life cycle

and not just at the end.

Rethink Quality: Trainings are not offered for awareness and

implementation of quality. Quality is just offered theoretically with high

load of documentation. Management considers quality as a burden.

Leadership should develop commitment towards quality and start

rethinking quality, culture change and adopt total quality philosophy

and start considering quality as an integral part of organization on long

term basis.

Poor Baseline Knowledge: There is an acute shortage of quality

domain experts at lower or baseline level in local SMSHs which is one

of the reasons for poor implementation of quality. Processes should be

developed to involve lower level employees to learn and develop

domain expertise in quality. Templates, Standard Operating

Procedures (SOP) and easily accessible manuals should be provided

to develop and enforce quality culture.

Change Management: Requirement management and change

management processes are not followed using quality guidelines which

leads to non conformance due to incomplete information and delays in

projects. Management should develop proper processes for change

management and customer requirement gathering which should be

governed by an effective quality control system.

Lack of Planning: The project quality and delivery depends upon

schedule planning through Project Development Plan in industrial


99

practices that project plans are only made for the sake of

documentation and are not followed in letter and spirit. The variance in

schedule planning may affect timelines and project cost. There should

be strict vigilance in schedule planning to prevent from rework and

project delays. Project resources should be planned before project start

to avoid inconvenience from available resources.

5.19 PROBLEMS IN IMPLEMENTATION OF QMS IN PAKISTAN’S IT

INDUSTRY

Tight budgets do not allow most of the organizations to invest on QMS

(or related practices) as most of them only adopt it to create a better

market impression rather than improve their system. Most of the SME’s

only adopt QMS when external financial support is involved. PSEB and

Business Support Fund (NGO) are some of the organizations providing

support to SME to implement such practices.

Lack of financial resources leads to few investments on human

resource training and more on technological solutions, untrained staff

leads to unpolished Quality System.

Lack of trainings for most of the staff (usually a selected few are trained

from external sources and are provided with certificates that increases

their academic qualification level and hence motivates them), leads to

lack interest in QMS.

Many QMS activities can be easily recorded and documented with use

of software solutions (or deployment of ERP applications), but financial

constraints force organizations to use manual recording methods which

leads to human errors, missing entries, slower responses, etc.

eventually effecting overall performance of QMS.

Re-work is a major issue as most of the organizations cannot afford to

invest higher on Quality Assurance and focus more on development &

delivering, which leads to problems at customer’s end and reboot of

development process. Quality Assurance is mostly done with support


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of QA tools that are either free or very old as the new ones with better

features are very expensive.

5.20 SUMMARY In this chapter descriptive results of the survey are reported for each

quality construct. Problems and issues raised by the IT practitioners are also

presented at the end. Problems in implementation of quality management

systems in local IT industry are highlighted. Analysis and findings are

presented in the next chapter.

Chapter 6 Analysis & Findings

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CHAPTER 6 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

In this chapter empirical analysis and its findings are presented. The

empirical analysis includes correlation and regression analysis of quality

constructs. Results of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) are elaborated to

evaluate the evolved LQIM model. IN the end graphical representation of

LQIM model and its conceptual detail is given.

The following section addresses the fourth research question.

Question 4. What can be a proposed SPI paradigm which can best fit to

solve the problems of quality improvement in the local

software houses (SMSHs)?

In order to address this question following two statistical techniques are

used to come up with a reliable and measurably fit optimum model for SPI in

local SMSHs. First section includes output from SPSS ver. 16.0 as proof of

empirical analysis, using linear regression and correlation analysis to depict

the interrelationship between the dependent variable (QualityIMP) and 7

independent constructs as discussed in Chapter 4 (Methodology). Important

components of empirical analysis like reliability, internal validity of constructs

and data collection instrument, and external validity are also discussed. In the

second section in order to propose an optimum SPI Model Structure Equation

Modelling (SEM) analysis is carried out using Analytical Movement of

Structures ( AMOS) to further validate the results obtained through the linear

regression modelling. The objective is to test the stability of the relationships

between the measurement variables and the constructs and measure the

goodness of fit of the proposed SPI Model.

6.1 RELIABILITY ANALYSIS

Reliability Is one of the main pillars of research methods and techniques meant to endorse and put into practice the authenticity of methodology on longitudinal scale to guarantee similar research outcomes by different researchers (Yin, 2003). The instrument design and data collection procedures have been reported in detail in Chapter-4 (Methodology). The


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instrument was pretested and reviewed by experts in order to filter out all types of misinterpretations and ambiguities for respondents and surveyors. Reliability means that a test, method or an experiment yields the same results on repeated trials (Carmines and Zeller, 1979). In order to ascertain the reliability of data collection instrument and the data collected against each indicator variable, a technique developed by Cronbach, (1951), is used during the data analysis. The SPSS ver.16.0 was used to run the scale reliability Cronbach’s Alpha test. This technique gives a value of Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha for measuring reliability. According to Murphy and Balzer, (1989) generally Cronbach’s Coefficients value of greater than 0.70 is considered adequate. In reference to

TABLE 17 the Cronbach’s Alpha for this research is 0.839 based on 47

items of questionnaire and 227 respondents. It is a measurement of the

overall reliability of instrument. The Cronbach’s test was also applied to all

eight constructs individually and as indicated in TABLE 16 the maximum

range of Cronbach’s Alpha for (Structure= 0.77) and the minimum Range of

Cronbach’s Alpha for (Monitoring & Control =0.51 and. Therefore, reliability of

instrument is valid and good as according to Nunnally, (1978) Cronbach’s

Coefficient Alpha value of more than (0.5) is also acceptable. A study was

carried out by Van de Ven and Ferry (1980) suggested that Crobach’s Alpha

value of 0.35 is also an acceptable benchmark. In order to ascertain

construct reliability the Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha for the eight quality

constructs is given in TABLE 16 for reference.


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RELIABILITY TEST SPSS OUTPUT

TABLE 16 RELIABILITY OF CONSTRUCTS

CONSTRUCT ABBREVIATION Cronbach’s Alpha

Organization Size & Structure OSS 0.77 Organization Culture OCL 0.53 Organization Behaviour Towards Quality OBQ 0.67 Requirement Management RQM 0.61 Project Planning PPL 0.62 Project Monitoring & Control PMC 0.51 Measurement & Analysis MAN 0.72 Process Quality Improvement PQI 0.68

TABLE 17 RELIABILITY STATISTICS

Cronbach's Alpha N of Items

RELIABILITY /VARIABLES=SIZ TND STA OST RTN OVT SHD LRN COM TM TRA TST ASS RA TR SQI QA TPQ PR EST CS CM OSR CNF UAT PPL RM CSTD AR PM PT PER TW PMR DCS PPR DL KBL RP PI TQM QPL CPI OCM SCM SPI ML /SCALE('ALL VARIABLES') ALL /MODEL=ALPHA.

0.839 47

6.2 INTERNAL VALIDITY CONSTRUCTS

Validity measures the quality of answers provided against the research

questions. Internal validity of the data and data collection instrument includes

the determination of cause and effect relationships introduced by Dilanthi at

al., (2002) in the design of experiment by fitting a theoretical framework

behind each construct for finding out effects on dependent variables.

According to Carmines and Zeller, (1979), validity also means that if the

instrument measures what was intended to measure then that instrument is

simply valid. Development of 47 indicators of quality practices from ISO 9000:

2001 and CMM (CMU/SEI) KPAs provides a solid foundation on which to

build a methodology to assess quality improvement practices in local industry.


104

A number of similar studies have used SEM and proposed the same cause

and effect relationship between constructs and have made recommendations.

Among contemporary studies, a recent study by Khung Kok Wei, (2009) uses

the same model. On the basis of literature review, interaction with academic

quality experts and data collection from IT practitioners resulted in creation of

8 quality constructs to measure the quality improvement practices. In general

these constructs resolve the issue of evaluating interrelationships between

large number of items. It is a way of condensing and summarizing the

information into new dimension of composite size called constructs. It is also

called factor analysis (Flynn et al, 1994). The reference list representing

literature review along with detail discussion on research design and research

methodology section gives detailed discussion on engineering of data

collection tool, development of quality constructs and subsequent survey

administration.

6.3 EXTERNAL VALIDITY

External validity investigates whether the research findings in a

particular environment can be generalized for other situations in which a

sample population is investigated. Such a generalized behaviour can be a

critical characteristic of research that further signifies the research’s scope

and make it contributory to multidimensional fields and body of knowledge

(Dilanthi et al, 2002). To further enhance the external validity of the research a

systematic random sampling technique is adopted to select an unbiased

sample size from a list containing Software houses located mainly in four

major cities of Pakistan namely Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The data was collected from members of PSEB and PASHA and other

software houses. The methodology to select samples systematically was

followed to get a true probability sample which can be justified statistically. It

is envisaged from the above discussion that this research has fulfilled the

prerequisites, and has good external validity


105

6.4 CORRELATION ANALYSIS

The correlation matrix for 8 quality constructs for quality improvement and

quality implementation is given in TABLE 21. where results are reported

along with Pearson Correlation Coefficient Alpha value denoted by “R”,

Level of Significance denoted by “P” and Sample size N. Correlation is

considered significant at level 0.0l if “P” value is near to 0.01, similarly

correlation is considered significant at level 0.05 in case “P” value is near

to 0.05.

TABLE 18 CORRELATION BETWEEN ALL CONSTRUCTS ** Correlation is Significant at the 0.05 level (2‐tailed)

PLANNING REQ_MGT STRUCTURE CULTURE QUALITY CONTROL MEASURE QUALITYIMP

PLANNING

R 1 P N 227

REQ_MGT

R .534** 1 P .000 N 227 227

STRUCTURE

R .204** .356** 1 P .002 .000 N 227 227 227

CULTURE R .384** .517** .283** 1 P .000 .000 .000 N 227 227 227 227

QUALITY

R ‐.236** ‐.372** ‐.488** ‐.460** 1 P .000 .000 .000 .000 N 227 227 227 227 227

CONTROL R .513** .548** .254** .449** ‐.222** 1 P .000 .000 .000 .000 .001 N 227 227 227 227 227 227

MEASURE R .514** .623** .324** .499** ‐.336** .618** 1 P .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 N 227 227 227 227 227 227 227

QUALITY_IMP R .486** .547** .427** .502** ‐.341** .595** .648** 1 P .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 N 227 227 227 227 227 227 227 227


106

In TABLE 18, it is obvious that there is a strong correlation between the

dependent variable and all other variables in the table. Hypothetically if the

correlation is high between two variables then it is said that the two variables

have strong interrelationship characteristics. If we try to study the correlation

of dependent variable “QUALITY_IMP” with the all other quality constructs,

the TABLE 18 shows significant correlation with 7 constructs at significance

level 0.05%. The significance value of Planning is 0.486, that of REQ_MGT is

0.547, that of STRUCTURE is 0.427, that of CULTURE is 0.502, that of

QUALITY is 0.341, that of CONTROL is 0.595 and that of MEASURE is

0.648, The subsequent step in the empirical analysis is to find out the impact

in variability of dependent variable outcomes due to the independent

variables. According to Mahour, (2006) regression analysis explains which

variables(s) is significant among other variables in explaining the quantum of

variability on dependent variables. The following section gives

implementation details of the theoretical model to test the approximation of

the model already developed in chapter 4 (Methodology).

6.5 REGRESSION ANALYSIS

Following the theoretical framework for regression analysis given in

Methodology Chapter-4, regression analysis was done using SPSS ver.16.0.

The output results are given in, TABLE 19, TABLE 20, and TABLE 21. Quality

Improvement (QualityIMP) construct was put as dependent variable and all

other 7 constructs namely Structure, Culture, Planning, Control, Quality ,

Req_Management and Measurement were put in the category of independent

variables.

TABLE 19 MODEL SUMMARY

Model R R Square Adjusted R Square

Std. Error of the Estimate

1 .744 .553 .539 .52844

a. Predictors: (Constant), MEASURE, QUALITY, Structure, CULTURE, PLANNING, CONTROL, REQ_MGT b. Dependent Variable: QUALITYIMP


107

TABLE 20 ANOVA

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

1 Regression 75.704 7 10.815 38.728 .000aResidual 61.156 219 .279Total 136.859 226

a. Predictors: (Constant), MEASURE, QUALITY, Structure, CULTURE, PLANNING, CONTROL, REQ_MGT, b. Dependent Variable: QUALITYIMP TABLE 21 COEFFICIENTS

Model

Un‐standardized Coefficients

Standardized Coefficients

T Sig. B Std. Error Beta1 (Constant) ‐.308 .428 ‐.720 .472

PLANNING .132 .074 .103 1.797 .074REQ_MGT .051 .074 .045 .686 .493STRUCTURE .225 .059 .204 3.821 .000CULTURE .191 .081 .138 2.366 .019QUALITY .014 .063 .013 .226 .821CONTROL .247 .069 .222 3.588 .000MEASURE .279 .061 .300 4.538 .000

Dependent Variable: QUALITYIMP

According to the output four independent variables are strong

predictors of dependent variable QualityIMP. As indicated in TABLE 19 R-

Square = 0.553 which means that these constructs explain 55.3% variability of

dependent variable QualityIMP. As indicated in TABLE 21 Significant

predictors of QualityIMP are; significance of Structure (OSS) is 0.000, that

of Culture (OCL) is 0.019, that of Control (PMC) is 0.000), that of Measure (MAN) is 0.000 are significant at P value less than 0.05. The value in TABLE

21 also endorse that the relationship between QualityIMP is linear with the 4

predicting independent variables.


108

Analysis of variance (ANOVA ) was also performed through SPSS ver.

16 and as indicated in TABLE 20 ANOVA significance (P- Value) is 0.000

which signifies that the model is statically significant at Alpha= 0.05.

It can be deduced from this analysis that in order to make an effective

Quality Improvement Model and guidelines for the local industry the

following 4 critical success factors will play a very important role. Dependency

model for quality improvement is given in FIGURE 6. Implications and

guidelines to implement these constructs shall be discussed in Chapter 7

where the final model is evolved by using SEM.

FIGURE 6 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT DEPENDENCY MODEL

Quality Improvement (QIMP) DepVar Organizational Culture (OCL) IndVar Project Monitoring and Control (PMC) IndVar Organization Size and Structure (OST) IndVar Measurement and Analysis (MAN) IndVar


109

At this point it is important to explore the covariance between each of

these constructs and also need to find out the impact of each unique variable

on the respective construct. For this Structural Equation Modelling (SEM)

technique is used that is discussed in the next section. It will help to analyze

this model further and help to reduce the set of variables into a lean and more

manageable Model.

6.6 STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING

Specialized statistical software called Analytical Movement of

Structures (AMOS) is used to further refine the model to come up with an

optimum SPI paradigm. AMOS has a graphical interface .and is an excellent

tool to use for SEM model fitting Khung Kok Wei, (2009). SEM basically

describes relationship between variables. SEM technique is similar to

regression modelling and factor analysis and is effective in a way for removing

multi-co-linearity in the model. AMOS has a graphical interface and is an

excellent tool to use for SEM model fitting. AMOS is distributed by SPSS Inc.

6.6.1 SEM IMPLEMENTATION

. A second order Critical Factor Analysis (CFA) is carried out using

SEM to further validate the results obtained through the linear regression

modelling in previous section. It tests the stability of the relationships between

the measurement variables and the constructs. At this stage all 8 latent

constructs are retained and the total numbers of measurement variable

indicators remain 47. The SEM completed 4 runs to reach acceptable

goodness of fit indices benchmark level. During the run 4 constructs got

completely deleted. In total 37 indicators were deleted from scale

development process. These deleted indicators were found to be inadequate

to load the model due to poor level of explained variance. List of the deleted

indicators is given in table 26 at the end of this section. The graphical output

of the model is given in FIGURE 7 and the recommended optimum paradigm

standard quality practices are shown in TABLE 25.

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112

as shown in TABLE 23 is 0.76 which is less than the benchmark and therefore

it is a mediocre indication of SPI Model fit. One reason for mediocre model fit

may be that sample size is small.

6.6.3.2 GOODNESS-0F-FIT INDEX (GFI)

The goodness of fit GFI was founded by Joreskog and Sorbom in

1984. Goodness of fit index is an alternative to the chi-square test and its

criterion is to assess the ratio of variance that is accounted for by the

approximation of the SPI Model covariance. Through such estimation it can

be predicted how close the proposed model is able to replicate the covariance

of population matrix (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007). It has also been found that

as the value of GFI increases the number of parameters in the model also

increases.

In reference to Error! Reference source not found. the value of GFI =

0.926 which is greater than 0.9 benchmark, therefore it can be confirmed that

SPI model has a very good Model fit.

6.6.4 ROOT MEAN SQUARE ERROR INDEX (RMSEA) 6.6.4 ROOT MEAN SQUARE ERROR INDEX (RMSEA)

TABLE 24 RMSEA

Model RMSEA LO 90 HI 90 PCLOSE

Default model .077 .056 .097 .020

Independence model.179 .162 .196 .000

The RSMEA index was first developed by Steiger and Lind (1990).

RMSEA has evolved as a good measure for models fit with regard to model’s

economy or parsimony. It chooses the most optimal parameters that would fit

the population covariance matrix (Byrne, 1998). In other words it assesses the

divergence among the proposed and estimated covariance matrices per

degree of freedom. In recent years it has gained importance among

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114

The detail of the significant quality constructs evolved through the SEM

analysis and quality improvement indicators is given in TABLE 25

TABLE 25 EVOLVED SPI PARADIGM PRACTICES

CONSTRUCTS LQIM VARIABLE INDICATORS

Org. Size & Structure (OSS) TND Technology / Research & Dev. Org. Culture (OCL) COM Communication TRA Training TST Team Structure Org. Behaviour towards Quality (OBQ) TR Turnover Rate SQI Software Quality Improvement QA Quality Assurance TPQ Top Management Quality Approach Measurement & Analysis (MAN) KBL Knowledge Base Library DL Defect log

The item wise deletion of Questionnaire items (indicators) from the

model during Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is given in table 26.

TABLE 26 SEM DELETED ITEMS FROM MODEL

No VAR QUESTIONS

1 RTN Employees are hired on long term basis and organization tries to retain employees

2 SPI The organization has dedicated (quality Assurance) QA group for tailoring And improving standard processes.

3 CPI CPI (Continues Process Improvement) is practiced dedicatedly and documented to improve quality.

4 SCM The organization has established a shared knowledge base library for configuration management, which can accurately reconstructing software items from scratch in development environment.

5 PI After process analysis and measurement, top management is quick at devising corrective actions for process improvement.

6 TQM Top management while investing in quality and process improvement considered it as a cost burden.

7 ASS Personnel performance assessment just documentary and everyone is given same bonus?

8 CS There is some gap between customer understanding and project team’s perception of customer requirement.

9 PM All variations in baseline of project plan implementation due to changes, quality, schedule and delays are well reflected in the updated project plans


115

10 CM Customer requirement changes that occur during development are incorporated through Change control Board..

11 OSR Organizational documented subcontract management procedure is available for out Sourcing projects to external firms.

12 CSTD Organization has common coding standards for all projects and all employees are trained.

13 DCS Data Collection System (DCS) has dedicated resources are available and DCS is in use for collecting process measurement data on continuous basis

14 STA Organization has hired data analysis experts like MSc / PhD statistics for organizational and quality performance analysis.

15 PT Project plans are tracked and different versions are maintained due to functionality changes.

16 SIZ Your organization have number of employees from

17 TM Task allocation and time management is strictly followed.

18 SHD Usually tasks are completed within working hours planned for the task: how much you agree?

19 RA Your organization can accept projects even if required resources are insufficient to complete the project.

20 CNF Software errors issues arise frequently after the project completion and handover.

21 AR Management conducts periodic quality audits and reviews for all stages in a project continuously for all projects.

22 TW In case of project delay (failure), Project performance Assessment and responsibility is emphasized on individual basis rather than team based responsibility

23 PMR Organization defined and documented procedure for measuring process performance is practiced?

24 LRN Top management and colleagues willingly sponsor learning to other employees usually.

25 EST A documented procedure is used for project cost, effort and size estimation.

26 ML The maturity level of your organization with respect to quality is somewhere at.

27 QPL Top management establishes plans for quality improvement activities and continuously gives a follow up.

28 OCM The organization has committed funds, staff and other resources for quality process development and process assessment.

29 RP Top management is equally willing to employ dedicated staff for quality control and process Improvement.

30 OST There are more than 3 levels of management hierarchy in the organization

31 PER Cost Performance Index (CPI) or Schedule Performance Index (SPI) or project earned value tracking are periodically calculated.

32 PR A documented review process exists at each stage to transfer project from one stage to another like Sign‐in, requirement , design, coding and to testing .

33 UAT Project test cases are prepared at design stage before implementation of design.

34 PPL Project development plan with resource allocation (PDP) is prepared and strictly followed throughout the SDLC.

35 RM Project risk assessment and mitigation is thoroughly documented and evaluated before start of each project.

36 PPR Process efficiency and effectiveness is measured individually for each process to optimize process performance

37 OVT Organization practices include Overtime hours offered, appreciated and paid for.


116

6.7 LEAN QUALITY IMPROVEMENT MODEL CONCEPTUAL DETAIL

The conceptual detail of Lean Quality Improvement Model (LQIM) that evolved

through SEM analysis is given in TABLE 27. This conceptual detail is based on

Deming’s TQM philosophy of Plan. Do. Check, Act, PDCA and Software Process

Improvement (SPI) guidelines from literature review.

TABLE 27 LQIM CONCEPTUAL DETAIL

MODEL VARIABLE INDICATOR DESCRIPTION

PLAN

Organization Size and Structure (OSS)

TND Tech. R n’ D

The research performed on existing and new applications, processes and hardware can result in new product development or up‐gradation of existing LQIM Process.

Organization Culture (OCL)

COM Communication

To make any changes in the culture of the organization, whether for the sake of quality or business development, freedom of speech and communication is to be established. Top Management is required to develop effective and easily available communication systems that can be used by all personnel involved so that they are able to express their opinion and also express their work progress (self‐monitoring) and problems / issues / violations (monitoring of others) through this system. Mode of communication can be email, phone, hand‐written, etc. but all communication is to be logged and recorded to ensure investigation of any problem and to rectify / correct any changes that are not garnering a positive response.

TRA Training

A system for training need assessments and skill development of personnel is to be established to increase the adaption rate of culture changes and personnel capabilities. Culture change refers to changes in processes and normal day‐to‐day tasks due to implementation of LQIM. Culture change is a holistic approach based on long term planning. Short internal awareness sessions can help people increase their confidence while keeping everything under budget.

TST Team Structure

Cross sectional teams based on domain experts from all departments involved in LQIM development and implementation need to be established in order to ensure that all departments are part of the implementation process and are able to comply with LQIM requirements.


117

Organization’s Behavior Towards Quality (OBQ)

TPQ

Top Management Quality Approach

Quality requires resources and investment from Top Management. It is the Management’s decision whether they want to provide all resources or limit them based on their budgeting. Timeline provided is also at the hands of Top Management. In the end, it is their decision about “Timeline” and “Resources” that will eventually support in achievement of quality as planned. Limited resources and short timelines may not provide the intended results, but long timelines and unlimited resources are also not the right solution. Top Management’s priority towards quality is the key.

TR Turnover Rate

A high turnover rate (more than 6% person leaving the organization annually) expresses insecurity of employees and can weaken the base of LQIM. Organization needs to motivate their personnel through incentives (bonuses and titles) and trainings that can support them not only in operations but also in their career development.


Plan must include methods for quality assurance so that products and services are under constant check while they are being processed, therefore leaving little chances for non‐conformities. Cost of Quality Assurance may be high, but through adopting TQM approach with long term benefits and almost no re‐work, makes up to the investment in this category.

DO

Organization Culture (OCL) TRA Training

Perform the trainings based on the requirements of LQIM as well as focused on personnel preferences and on the basis of training need assessment. Develop a learning culture through training and re‐training.

Organization’s Behavior Towards Quality (OBQ)


Quality Assurance goes side by side with product development processes in IT companies. This system is required to ensure that the required product and services are meeting customer requirements. Management’s approach is to gain customer’s loyalty and long term relationship.

CHECK

Measurement and Analysis (MAN)

KBL Knowledge Base Library

Organization is required to record all the issues and problems faced during a working year, and also record their rectifications and methods to avoid such issues / problems. This knowledge is distributed to all levels of organization so that personnel are able to learn from their past mistakes and avoid any problems that may have occurred previously.

DL Defect Log Defects are recorded separately so that they can be statistically analyzed to identify any trends


118

6.8 SUMMARY

In this chapter empirical analysis and its findings are presented. The empirical

analysis includes correlation and regression analysis of quality constructs.

Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique is used to develop an

optimized Lean Quality Improvement Model (LQIM) for standard quality

practices in SMSH. Eight quality constructs were developed to ascertain the

level of current quality practices and evolve a LQIM. In correlation analysis all

seven independent constructs were found significant towards the dependent

variable Quality Improvement. Regression analysis revealed that only four of

these independent quality constructs contributed significantly towards the

dependant variable Quality Improvement. Through Structural Equation

Modelling (SEM) the LQIM was evolved. This model presented four quality

constructs and ten of their respective quality practices as significant. At the

end the conceptual understanding of the LQIM model is presented for

implementation in SMSH using Deming’s TQM Philosophy of PDCA. The next

chapter provides recommendations for implementing quality practices.

or determine alternates to avoid / eradicate the issues.

ACT

Organization’s Behaviour Towards Quality (OBQ)

SQI Software Quality Improvement

The findings based on Quality Assurance Activities, Logs, reviews, internal audits and statistical analysis (using various tools), need to be corrected with most appropriate corrective measure. This can also help in determining better solutions to enhance system performance.

Chapter 7 Recommendations

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CHAPTER 7 RECOMMENDATIONS

This chapter includes the set of recommendations given on the

following basis. Literature review on quality models and SME culture for small

and medium size software houses according to research questions 1 and 2;

Descriptive Analysis findings that gives answer to the problems faced by

SMSHs according to research question 3 and analysis & discussions to

measure the reliability and goodness of fit of the proposed SPI paradigm

according to research question 4.

7.1 QUESTION 1: HOW TO CHANGE ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN SMSH

Many companies are not in favour of the cultural change. They resist

change as they had a fear of failure. They feel easy to the old environment.

They are unaware of the real meaning of implementing the quality in a

company. Only relying on training and certifications does not mean the

organization has achieved the quality level. According to Crouch (1998), “I do

wish I had more knowledge in areas such as identifying key business drivers

and processes as well as developing performance goals, measures and

standards”. As all you learn from the training and certification does not work

as it is too much academic to go by the book. It should be more flexible and

close to the real life examples.

But before implementing any strategy, standard and approach the

organization should develop clear understanding of processes and standards.

SMSHs shall realize the importance of the quality culture and bring the

change according to their respective business environment. Process

reliability, productivity, quality are usually measured by human perception in a

poor quality environment. Preferably, an effective way to measure process

performance and quality is to first understand the process at micro and macro

levels and then use statistical measurement techniques and automated

software tools for data analysis (Siok and Tian, 2007). Make the practitioners

and leadership believe that yes there is a need of the radical cultural change


120

in the organization for the improvement of business performance. The local

SMSH still fail to gain the latent benefit of cost of quality concept that it is an

investment and not an over head cost (Deming, 1986). SMSH need to

reengineer their old processes according to the new upgraded technologies

and need to automate their quality management systems. In early 90s a

number of large scale change management projects failed for the reasons

related to technology up gradation as the managers continued to rely on the

old processes (Markus, and Keil, 1994). So there is a need of not only to bring

the change but the essential part is to reengineer their old processes and to

create process alignment with technology and organization culture. As a result

performance efficiency will increase due to SPI and reduction in rework costs.

Improvement in quality will achieve economies of scale and thus local

software products will be more competitive in global markets. That’s the

reason why SMSH should implement TQM principles along with ISO 9000 or

CMM /CMMI for continuous improvement of the quality.

To bring the change in the culture of our local software industry through

TQM a transition to total quality culture is required and behaviour towards

quality needs to be changed among the local IT practitioners. Top

management should delegate powers to empower employees to take

appropriate actions when the things go wrong or to take preventive action

before they go wrong instead of inspection and fire fighting afterwards. There

should be an open communication between the employees at all levels,

instead of having weak communication pattern based on the grapevine and

secrecy. As advised by Deming, (1986) break communication barriers and

learn from mistakes instead of hiding them or finger pointing on others. He

advised to adopt learning culture through training and retraining to develop

awareness in quality. Promote freedom of speech and open channels of

communication with internal and external customers. It’s top management’s

responsibility to create vision and lead the organization to success with

excellence in quality management (Anderson et al.,1994).


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7.2 RECOMMENDATIONS ON FINDINGS SMSH

All the responses from the IT practitioners were tabulated for

descriptive analysis and results. Based on the feedback, comments from the

respondents and in the light of literature review of quality models, quality and

quality culture in SME following recommendations are proposed.

7.2.1 ORGANIZATION SIZE & STRUCTURE

Employees should be hired on basis of available resources of the

organization. An organization needs to have at least one technology specialist

for each set of process areas and technology based departments because all

rounder cannot perform technical and trivial tasks in making high quality

products. A leader must be qualified, skilled and must have guidance and

leadership abilities in right directions. There should be a separate department

for Research and Development. The central and tall structure is not

appreciated because it can cause delays in decision making during project

development phases and also during quality improvement. There should be

criteria for employee harmony based upon their performance and assessment

and some beneficial services for employees. In this way the employees can

work with motivation and with their heart and soul which is a key point for

quality culture and a good environment. It also reduces turnover rate. SMEs

should make favourable human resource policies to retain employees to

prevent knowledge and brain drain due to high turnover rate.

7.2.2. ORGANIZATION CULTURE

Time management and time scheduling should be arranged according

to the project deadlines. Before committing and signing agreement with

customer regarding project cost and completion deadlines, top management

should consult project technical team leads. Offering overtime hours is not a

good approach as it signifies lack of time planning and time management.

There should be appropriate pay scales for IT professionals and working

overtime hours to be discouraged. Top management should take interest in

time scheduling and time planning as it will increase project success rate.


122

Freedom of speech is one of Deming’s 14 points and free communication

across organization should be encouraged.

Top management should promote learning culture by encouraging

employees as well as for management to learn on continuous basis. Training

about new and upcoming technologies is necessary for the organization to

compete in local and global markets. A specific budget should be allocated for

such trainings.

The assessment results lead to quality and performance improvement.

An organization should practice 360 degree assessment technique for

employee assessment and should reward people on good performance which

will also motivate remaining employees to work hard and perform better.

7.2.3. ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS QUALITY

An organization should take only those projects for which required

technical resources are sufficient and currently available. Resource

optimization and workload management helps to achieve high quality at low

cost. Tests are conducted to remove errors and non conformances of

software product. Quality can never be achieved by increased number of

tests. Top management should adopt preventive approach rather than

corrective approach toward testing and quality improvement. There should be

a separate team or department for quality control and quality assurance with

qualified and trained senior level quality assurance professionals.

7.2.4. REQUIREMENT DEVELOPMENT & MANAGEMENT

Requirement development needs adequate time schedules to avoid

from rework. The accuracy of time planned for requirement analysis and

commitment should be done on realistic timelines and not just estimates that

make the management happy. Implementation of estimation tools and

techniques should be encouraged. The accurate time scheduling for

requirement development and management would also take less effort for

requirement change management and configuration management. It is difficult

to reach total customer satisfaction but if a documented procedure is followed


123

for change management and software configuration management is practiced

as a tool, then most of the disputes and disagreements with the customer can

be settled.

Top management should be involved in time scheduling. There should

be frequent and close communication with the customer and all changes

should go through change control board. The requirement specification should

be made by the involvement of customer to achieve completeness. The

orientation of the SMEs should be towards total customer satisfaction. There

should be a change management agreement for requirement change to avoid

rework. Companies that are involved in offshore projects should hire legal

firms to develop agreements and policies to subcontract projects..

7.2.5. RECOMMENDATIONS: PROJECT PLANNING

Top management should develop comprehensive quality improvement

approach towards prevention of errors because non conformance after

handing over not only has high change management over heads, rework

costs and warranty claims, but it also maligns the repute of organization. User

Acceptance Tests (UAT) should be developed at design stage as required by

standard quality practices and software engineering models governing SDLC.

A given software development life cycle helps in defining a concrete way of

development and also prevents from rework. Developing test cases during

development lead to poor quality assurance practices. The project quality and

delivery depends upon schedule planning through Project Development Plan

(PDP) and Quality Management System. The variance in schedule planning

may affect timelines and project cost. There should be strict schedule

planning to prevent from rework and variance. Project resources should be

planned before project start to avoid from inconvenience from available

resources. Risk management is an important component of project

management (PMbok.)8 best practices, and risk management monitoring and

8 Project Management Book of Knowledge, Project Management Institute (PMI).


124

mitigation plans should be made part of SDLC. Top management should

practice proper effort estimation and resource utilization techniques to give

equal importance to all the projects regardless of size or profitability to ensure

uniform quality output. Management should follow a standard policy for

assigning project estimation deadlines in consultation with technical team

leads.

Common coding standards should be established and shared through

knowledge base library. Orientation training should include training on Coding

standards. By implementing coding standards software code becomes more

readable and understandable and it helps the developers during change

management and maintenance.

7.2.6. MONITORING AND CONTROL

The management should put emphasis on project monitoring and

process assessment side by side during project work by using standard

procedures because only functionality reviews and audits do not assure the

quality without appropriate quality control procedures. The management

should have ability to reorganize their effected plans and should allocate

optimal resources to timely accommodate changes without disturbing the

schedule of PDP. The management should introduce a trend of using metrics

at project measurement level for monitoring and tracking to get accurate

figures of process and project performance. Capability Process Index CPI for

all critical processes should be regularly monitored and tracked. It will help to

not only enhance the performance of individual processes but will also

improve the synergy and alignment between the processes. Team culture and

spirit of team work should be promoted among team members. It will create

stronger bonding and more communication among team members.


125

7.2.7. MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS

It is up to management to inculcate the performance measurement

culture in the organization. Secondly management should involve employees

in setting measurement goals.

The basic system and identifiers for process measurement and

process improvement should be developed for top managers and employees.

Mostly measures are not specified but if measures are specified, then these

measures should be linked with smart goals and objectives. Data collection

and storage procedures are not properly defined. In this undeveloped

environment, process measurement and process improvement is a big

challenge for SMSH. These software organizations need to have highly

qualified managers that are adequate to inculcate the measurement culture in

software houses and who should be able to develop a mechanism for data

collection System (DCS). Process efficiency and effectiveness is an important

measure to calculate process alignment and over all process synergy. As a

guideline top management has to assure that all processes are aligned

together and are working in synergy. Management should develop template

for post-mortem summary which should highlight lessons learned through

failure and should also list down mistakes which should not be repeated

again. Overall performance measurement is very weak area and effort should

be made to improve quality through performance measurement.

7.2.8. PROCESS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

Management should adopt quality culture by initiating programs like

ISO/CMMI certification. IT should develop quality training programs to create

quality awareness among the employees. Management should allocate

separate budget for Quality improvement and should consider it as an

investment (Juran, 1984). Management should also invest in having qualified

QA resources for process tailoring and up-gradation. Processes and

procedures internally developed should be practiced in letter and spirit and

not just left alone in the files and folders. Process improvement is most

important process in order to achieve quality product. If processes are not


126

improved frequently this means processes are not measured. Recent attitude

shows least concern towards process measurement. No check and control

towards quality because top management is interested towards quantity

rather than quality. If process is not measured, gap analysis cannot be

performed and hence processes improvement is not possible. But as it is

seen through following data organizations rarely improve its processes.

7.3. LQIM (PARADIGM) FOR LOCAL SMSH

In chapter 6, structural equation modelling (SEM) technique was used

to come up with an evolved LQIM to depict quality improvement paradigm and

standards practiced in the local software industry. LQIM is a tailored and

economized paradigm according to the practices and perceptions of the local

IT practitioners. The proposed LQIM is an indigenous model which when

improvised in accordance to the SMSHs cultural recommendations can

establish to be a fit model for SMSHs. The LQIM has already been ratified

according to generally accepted good fit indices in SEM analysis. It has been

established through literature review that to implement ISO 9000 SMSHs

should adopt TQM philosophy, long term planning and measurement culture

as such practices have proven to produce good results in the industry. The

main objective of the research was to propose a Lean Quality Improvement

model suitable for local software industry. This LQIM was derived through

SEM in the previous Chapter.

Implementation of Indigenous LQIM is proposed using the Deming’s

philosophy of “Plan DO Check Act”, PDCA Cycle for continuous process

improvement and is shown In

FIGURE 8 IMPLEMENTATION OF LQIM MODEL

The conceptual detail of the LQIM is given in TABLE 27. The LQIM Deployment plan mapped with PDCA is given in TABLE 28.


127

TABLE 28

FIGURE 8 IMPLEMENTATION OF LQIM MODEL

7.3.1. LEAN QUALITY IMPROVEMENT MODEL DEPLOYMENT PLAN

The current model provides us with a Lean Quality Improvement Model

(LQIM) for a SMSH. The model does not include planning and monitoring of

projects being performed in an organization. Most of the software companies’

rely on their project management of software development, considering

project planning to be an important part of this activity; In a SME model


128

development study in Finland Saastamoinen and Tukiainen, (2004) also

emphasized that planning and continual monitoring of quality activities as key

prerequisite for good quality products. The Finland study also covered Quality

practices like Planning, data collection, data validation, process reporting and

process measurement

Planning and Monitoring, its absence effect’s the prime objective of

quality achievement rather negatively. Moreover without any controls for

monitoring deployed, there is far less chance of timely identification of errors /

issues and their timely rectification. The model actually expresses use of

Quality Assurance at some stages for identification of issues, but without

planning various stages of project management and without their monitoring,

Quality Assurance will eventually lack a timely and planned response

therefore leading to rework and waste of resources. According to Allen,

Ramachandran and Abushama, (2003) in PRISMS study mentioned most

important Quality metrics like project tracking, monitoring and defect

detection. PRISMS study as well as literature review on SPI also emphasized

on automation of data collection activities to support planning and timely

decision making.

As indicated in LQIM deployment plan is mapped with Deming’s PDCA

cycle based on the conceptual understanding given in TABLE 27 and

guidelines given in the literature review.


129

TABLE 28 LQIM DEPLOYMENT PLAN MAPPED WITH PDCA

PHASE I : REVIEW & GAP ANALYSIS (Performed Once Only) Company Wide LQIM Review & Gap AnalysisReview of Existing Processes, Policies and ProceduresIdentification of Gaps based on best management PracticesSubmission of Gap Analysis Report with recommendations and solutions TRAINING A: Introduction and Awareness on LQIMDELIVERABLE : LQIM GAP ANALYSIS & RECOMMENDATION REPORT PHASE II : SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT / REVISION / IMPROVEMENT Development of Quality Policy & Quality ObjectivesDevelopment of Process Flow Charts , Corporate Organization Chart and Departmental ChartsLQIM Development and Implementation Monitoring TeamDevelopment of Technology Development & Research and Development Department Development of Procedure for Corrective and Preventive Measures Development of HR Policies (to reduce turnover rate)Development of Knowledge base LibraryDevelopment of Procedure for control of non‐conformanceDevelopment of Procedure for Quality AssuranceDevelopment of Procedures for CommunicationDevelopment of Training and Awareness procedures and plans (Systematic Culture Change Acceptance)Development of Procedure for internal system auditing (development of Audit Checklist) TRAINING B: Documentation, Recording and Reporting based on LQIM requirements DELIVERABLE : LQIM POLICIES, PROCEDURES AND TEMPLATES PHASE III : IMPLEMENTATIONImplementation Team AssignmentImplementation of Records as per developed proceduresImplementation of Records & Awareness verification Relating to LQIM Correction of Documentation based on FeedbackImplementation Team AssignmentDELIVERABLES: LQIM MANUAL PHASE IV : AUDITING Selection of Internal AuditorsPlanning the Internal AuditCollection of Defect Logs and updating knowledge base library Company‐wide LQIM Internal AuditCorrective Preventive Actions/Audit Non‐Conformity ClosingPerform Trend Analysis on the basis of previous audit results TRAINING C: Internal Auditing TrainingDELIVERABLES:INTERNAL AUDIT REPORT

PLAN

DO

CHECK

ACT


130

7.3.2. TQM SUGGESTIONS AND GUIDELINES In order to implement LQIM more effectively in the local software industry a set of

TQM implementation guidelines is presented which were developed during literature

review to fulfil the environmental and cultural requirements of proposed model.

Top management should assure total commitment towards optimum

resource allocation, training and CPI.

Planning should be made important part of all organizational and

project management activities continually on long and short term basis

Achievement of organizational goals through customer relationship

management (CRM ) and customer orientations.

Management to rethink quality as a way of doing business, and

resources spent on quality improvement should not be considered as a

cost but it is an investment which reaps higher profits in the long run.

Learning culture through training development programs to enhance

human resource performance skills, capabilities and quality awareness.

It will help to inculcate positive culture and work ethics.

Open Communication Channels across the organization for employees

to freely express ideas and share information and develop a sense of

team work within organization. (one man show to be discouraged). This

will help SMEs to capitalize on employee’s talent and innovativeness.

Selecting right people for the right job based on their academic

qualifications and skills; and selects the best cross-functional teams for

LQIM Development and Implementation Monitoring Team. Do not re-engineer on large scale, bring the change through small baby

steps ( wins), by forming a result oriented strategy and preventive

approach.

Management needs to provide enough resources for monitoring,

mitigation and management of assessed organizational risks.

Business process redesign should be carried out across the

organization to resolve the problems of resource contention which is

the biggest problem in SME. Business process redesign will reduce the


131

synchronization delays in processes and hence improve overall

effectiveness and profitability of SME.

Performance incentives and rewards should be separate from regular

increments based on annual assessment in order to create value

driven employees.

To create Involvement and ownership, Top Management should share

development of annual quality objectives in consultation with

employees.

Improve the work environment and culture through benchmarking with

industrial leading best practices and develop opportunities through

innovation, change management and feedback from all stakeholders.

SPI activities should be linked with customer satisfaction and

organizational goals, and top management should prioritize to improve

key process areas accordingly.

All activities like process measurement, data collection and process

rating should be automated by SME as human perception is poor and

inefficient as compared to automated process measurement tools.

7.3.3. LIMITATIONS OF PROPOSED LQIM PARADIGM

As LQIM is Culture changing process, normally the level of acceptance

expressed by human resource is very low in the beginning.

Not all personnel can be part of Skill Development & Training

Programs due to limitation of resources

Lack of Consistency by Management in long term planning for system

improvement.

Customers may prefer (and enforce in some cases) their own process

improvement policies over LQIM Policies.

Departments get resources according to their priority in LQIM,

therefore some departments are ignored intentionally in the beginning

Based on observations from local IT industry culture, employee

empowerment to take decisions is discouraged by higher management


132

Lack of proper inflation adjustment to annual increments which

eventually leads to higher turnover rate.

. All processes should be spiritually followed so that organization is

able to deliver quality software products.

. TQM culture is not found in these models therefore TQM should be

made part of SPI activities to reduce schedule delays, cost over runs,

and rework costs..

7.3.4. SUMMARY This chapter provides a set of recommendations based on literature

review and the empirical analysis of the research conducted. It also presents

an implementation and deployment model of the proposed LQIM. In the end

TQM guidelines are proposed for deploying LQIM based on Deming’s PDCA

cycle. The next chapter concludes the thesis.

Chapter 8 Conclusion

133

CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

The main rationale behind this reading is to develop an optimum Lean

Quality Improvement Model (LQIM) and a set of recommendations as

guidelines to Implement total quality culture and standard quality practices in

the local software industry. Indigenized LQIM is destined to give innovative

and flexible directions for SMSH to change their culture and improve their

processes economically by following TQM philosophy.

As a first step the study exposed the local IT industry’s behaviour

towards quality and its notion of quality through studying previous and

contemporary quality improvement practices in local SMSH. An exploratory

research effort in the domain of total quality management (TQM) and

Software Process Improvement (SPI) was conducted with the help of an

extensive literature review of major quality standards and models being

implemented in the local industry. The behaviour of international quality

standards was deliberated towards quality improvement culture and SMSH

practices. It’s cited in literature that Quality Culture plays an important role in

developing maturity, learning and improvement in the business performance

of an organization. Organizational quality culture groups people together with

an orientation to work towards achieving their common goals by being united.

The idea is to align all efforts towards achieving organizational set

performance goals by creating process synergy through TQM philosophy. The

literature review about quality, TQM, SMSH culture and quality improvement

is implicated to achieve a set of implementation guidelines for an indigenous

LQIM model. The results of the survey are analyzed and are reported to high

light the SMSH cultural and quality problems being faced to implement quality.

Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique was used to optimize

the theoretical structural framework and evolved an indigenized LQIM to

implement quality improvement paradigm and standard quality practices in the

local software industry. LQIM is a tailored and realistic paradigm according to

the needs and perceptions of the local IT practitioners.

Chapter 8 Conclusion

134

The proposed LQIM is an indigenous model which when improvised in

accordance to SMSH cultural and quality improvement recommendations, is

established to be a fit model for SMSH in the local industry. On Similar

footings implementation of Indigenous LQIM is recommended using the

Deming’s philosophy of PDCA Cycle for continuous process improvement. A

set of guidelines based on questionnaire results and literature review are also

proposed in order to improve the quality and culture of local SMSH.

LQIM and a set of quality improvement guidelines and practices

achieved as a paradigm through this research, is an economized and proven

(Good-Fit ) paradigm for implementation of true quality culture in local SMSH.

It is a first step towards rethinking of quality implementation based on TQM

philosophy and long term planning and measurement culture. Such practices

have proven to transform to quality culture and bring improvement in quality

processes and software quality culture, and above all produce optimal

business performance results in the industry.

In future this research can be extended to explore additional quality

dimensions which are recommended by Project Management Body of

Knowledge (PMBoK) and other quality models. This research can further be

replicated in other developing countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka

to develop Lean Quality Improvement Model (LQIM) to cater the needs and

cultural requirements of SME in a respective developing country.

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APPENDIX COVER LETTER

145

APPENDIX A – COVER LETTER

OPTIMUM SOFTWARE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT PARADIGM FOR QUALITY PRACTICES IN SOFTWARE INDUSTRY

This research project is about finding out whether bare minimum

quality practices are understood and implemented in the local software

industry. As a step further in this direction the objective is to map the actual

environment and true culture of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)

towards quality improvement, process improvement, and CPI. The feedback

from this survey will give us the concrete discrepancies between true SME

culture and enforced culture of international standards like CMM, CMMI, and

ISO etc. After identifying characteristics of a true SME culture, we will provide

a set of guidelines and a process improvement paradigm for SME, which is

the basic purpose of this research. The set of guidelines for SME software

process improvement paradigm will give the innovative and flexible directions

for SMEs to change their culture and improve their processes and quality.

Indeed organizations of all sizes especially of small size can implement it for

the improvement of their product and process quality. The new guidelines to

implement quality will enable small and medium sized software houses to

build optimum quality culture and maintain a bare minimum level of quality

that will lead SMEs to become competitive and as well as quality

organizations through continuous process improvement.

We are therefore writing to you to solicit your help and support in this

matter. The experience of your organization in this field will be extremely

valuable to our research. It is appreciated that this questionnaire may take

some of your valuable time, however this survey should not take more than 10

minutes to complete. The findings of this research “SPI paradigm and

Guidelines”, will be shared on your request. If you need any further

APPENDIX COVER LETTER

146

information or clarification, please do not hesitate to contact the key

researcher. I appreciate your kind co-operation in this matter, and look

forward to receiving your input. Identity of the assessor and the name of the

organization is not the part of this research (optional), therefore your privacy

will not be compromised.

With very best wishes,

Faisal Shah, ([email protected])

Student of Phd

Institute of Quality and Technology Management (Punjab University)

APPENDIX B QUESTIONNAIRE

147

APPENDIX B – QUESTIONNAIRE

Questionnaire: Part A

Objectives:

This part gets the information about organization structure, culture, size (number of employees) and ranking in market. The

output from this section will be used to find out the real discrepancies in SME, actual environment, behaviour towards quality

and true culture of local SME. It would be helpful to define a new way for culture change and a flexible model for SME.

Designation: _______________Name Software House: _______________(Optional) City: ________

The type of Quality standards / Model Processes your organization is following: O CMM O CMMI O ISO O TSP O other ____________ (Please Indicate)

1 Organization Size and Structure:

Low High

1.1 Your organization have number of employees from (1) 1 to 50, (2) 51-200, (3)

201-500, (4) 501 to 1000 (5) greater than 1000?

1 2 3 4 5

1.2 Organization has separate department and allocated budget for technology

Research & Development.

1 2 3 4 5

1.3 Organization has hired data analysis experts like MSc / PhD statistics for

organizational and quality performance analysis.

1 2 3 4 5

1.4 There are less than three levels of management hierarchy in the organization 1 2 3 4 5

1.5 Employees are hired on long term basis and organization tries to retain

employees

1 2 3 4 5

2 Organization Culture:

2.1 Organization practices include overtime hours offered, appreciated and paid for. 1 2 3 4 5

2.2 Usually tasks are completed within working hours planned for the task. 1 2 3 4 5

2.3 Top management and colleagues willingly sponsor learning to other employees

usually.

1 2 3 4 5

2.4 Top management and colleagues encourage practice to express views freely in

the organization and with top management without any hindrance (freedom of

speech).

1 2 3 4 5

2.5 Task allocation and time management is strictly followed. 1 2 3 4 5


148

2.6 Your management encourages training and all employees receive internal and

external training every year?

1 2 3 4 5

2.7 There are separate groups for Requirement Management, S/W Design,

Development and Testing.

1 2 3 4 5

2.8 Personnel performance assessment just documentary and everyone is given

same bonus?

1 2 3 4 5

3 Organization Behaviour towards Quality:

3.1 Your organization doesn’t accept projects when resources are in-sufficient to

complete the project.

1 2 3 4 5

3.2 Annual turnover rate of your company is low. 1 2 3 4 5

3.3 Management believes project quality can be improved through increasing

frequency of testing

1 2 3 4 5

3.4

Your management has launched and supported a complete quality improvement

(certification) program during last 3 years.

1 2 3 4 5

3.5 Top management allocates appropriate deadlines and resources for quality

assurance.

1 2 3 4 5

Organization Quality & Process Improvement: Objectives:

This part contains questions about organization’s processes, process performance, quality and process improvement, risk

management, process and project assessment etc. The response from this section will give us the requirements and guidelines

to define a software process and quality improvement paradigm for SME.

4 Requirement Development and Management: Low High

4.1 A documented review process exists at each stage to transfer project from one stage

to another like sign-in, requirement , design, coding and testing .

1 2 3 4 5

4.2 A documented procedure is used for project cost, effort and size estimation. 1 2 3 4 5

4.3 There is usually no gap between customer understanding and project team’s

perception of requirement.

1 2 3 4 5

4.4 Customer requirement changes that occur during development are incorporated

through Change Control Board.

1 2 3 4 5

4.5 Organizational documented subcontract management procedure is available for out 1 2 3 4 5


149

Sourcing projects to external firms.

5 Project Planning:

5.1 Software errors and issues seldom arise after the project completion and handover. 1 2 3 4 5

5.2 Project test cases are prepared at design stage before implementation of design. 1 2 3 4 5

5.3 Project development plan with resource allocation (PDP) is prepared and followed

throughout SDLC.

1 2 3 4 5

5.4 Project risk assessment and mitigation is thoroughly documented & evaluated before

start of project.

1 2 3 4 5

5.5 Organization has common coding standards for all projects and all employees are

trained.

1 2 3 4 5

6 Project Monitoring and Control

6.1 Management conducts periodic quality audits and reviews for all stages in a project

continuously for all projects.

1 2 3 4 5

6.2 All variations in baseline of project plan implementation due to changes, quality,

schedule and delays are well reflected in the updated project plans.

1 2 3 4 5

6.3 Project plans are tracked and different versions are maintained due to functionality

changes.

1 2 3 4 5

6.4

Cost Performance Index (CPI) or Schedule Performance Index (SPI) or project earned

value tracking are periodically calculated.

1 2 3 4 5

6.5 In case of project delay (failure), project performance assessment and responsibility is

emphasized on team rather than laying individuals responsible.

1 2 3 4 5

7 Measurement and Analysis:

7.1 Organization defined and documented procedure for measuring process performance

is practiced?

1 2 3 4 5

7.2 Data Collection System (DCS) has dedicated resources are available and DCS is in

use for collecting process measurement data on continuous basis.

1 2 3 4 5

7.3 Process efficiency and effectiveness is measured individually for each process to

optimize process performance (cost impact).

1 2 3 4 5

7.4 A defect log is maintained and measured to statistically identify trends and causes of

defect occurrence.

1 2 3 4 5

7.5 Organizational measured and analyzed data repository established and lessons

learned are shared with the employees to avoid similar defects.

1 2 3 4 5


150

Comments :

______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

8 Process and Quality Improvement:

8.1 Top management is equally willing to employ dedicated staff for quality control and

process Improvement.

1 2 3 4 5

8.2 After process analysis and measurement, top management is quick at devising

corrective actions for process improvement.

1 2 3 4 5

8.3 Top management while investing in quality and process improvement considered it as

a an investment and not cost burden.

1 2 3 4 5

8.4 Top management establishes plans for quality improvement activities and

continuously follow ups.

1 2 3 4 5

8.5 Continues Process Improvement (CPI) is practiced dedicatedly and is documented to

improve the quality.

1 2 3 4 5

8.6 The organization has committed funds, staff and other resources for quality process

development and process assessment.

1 2 3 4 5

8.7 The organization has established a shared knowledge base library for configuration

management, which can accurately reconstruct software items from scratch in

development environment.

1 2 3 4 5

8.8 The organization has dedicated QA group for tailoring and improving processes. 1 2 3 4 5

8.9 The maturity level of your organization with respect to quality is somewhere at. 1 2 3 4 5

APPENDIX C QUESTIONNAIRE INDICATORS

151

APPENDIX C - QUESTIONNAIRE INDICATORS

Organization Culture:

1.0 Organization Size and Structure: Indicators

1.1 Your organization have number of employees from

(1) 1 to 50, (2) 51-200, (3) 201-500, (4) 501 to 1000

(5) greater than 1000?

Size

1.2 Organization has separate department and

allocated budget for technology Research &

Development.

Technology/R&D

1.3 Organization has hired data analysis experts like

MSc / PhD statistics for organizational and quality

performance analysis.

Statistician

1.4 There are less than three levels of management

hierarchy in the Organization

ORG Structure

1.5 Employees are hired on long term basis and

organization

tries to retain employees

Retention

2.0 Organization Culture: Indicators

2.1 Organization practices include overtime hours

offered,

appreciated and paid for.

Overtime

2.2 Usually tasks are completed within working hours

planned for the task.

Scheduling

2.3 Top management and colleagues willingly sponsor Learning


152

learning of other employees usually.

2.4 Top management and colleagues encourage

practice to express views freely within organization

and with top management openly (freedom of

speech).

Communication

2.5 Task allocation and time management is strictly

followed.

Time schedule

2.6 Your management encourages training and all

employees receive internal and external training

every year?

Training

2.7 There are separate groups for Requirement

Management,

Software Design, Development and Testing.

Team Structure

2.8 Personnel performance assessment just

documentary and everyone is given same bonus?

Assessment

3.0 Organization Behaviour towards Quality: Indicators

3.1 Your organization doesn’t accept projects when

resources are in-sufficient to complete the project..

Resource

Allocation

3.2 Annual turnover rate of your company is low Turnover

Rate

3.3 Management believes project quality can be

improved through increasing frequency of tests

conducted

Quality

Improvement

3.4 Your management has launched and supported a

complete quality improvement (certification)

program during last 3 years.

Quality

Assurance


153

3.5 Top management allocates appropriate deadlines

and resources for quality assurance.

Top

Management

4.0 Requirement Development and Management: Indicators

4.1 A documented review process exists at each stage

to transfer project from one stage to another like

sign-in, requirement, design, coding and testing .

Project Review

4.2 A documented procedure is used for project cost,

effort

and size estimation.

Estimation

4.3 There is usually no gap between customer

understanding and project team’s perception of

customer requirement.

Customer

satisfaction

4.4 Customer requirement changes that occur during

development are incorporated through Change

Control Board.

Change

management

4.5 Organizational documented subcontract

management procedure is available for out Sourcing

projects to external firms.

Out sourcing

5.0 Project Planning: Indicators

5.1 Software errors issues seldom arise after the project

completion and handover.

Conformance

5.2 Project test cases are prepared at design stage

before implementation of design.

Acceptance

Testing

5.3 Project development plan with resource allocation

(PDP) is prepared and strictly followed throughout

the SDLC.

Project Planning

5.4 Project risk assessment and mitigation is thoroughly

documented and evaluated before start of each

Risk


154

project. Management

5.5 Organization has common coding standards for all

projects and all employees are trained.

coding

standards

6.0 Project Monitoring and Control

6.1 Management conducts periodic quality audits and

reviews for all stages in a project continuously for all

projects.

Audits & review

6.2 All variations in baseline of project plan

implementation due to changes, quality, schedule

and delays are well reflected in the updated project

plans.

Project

monitoring

6.3 Project plans are tracked and different versions are

maintained due to functionality changes.

Project tracking

6.4 Cost Performance Index (CPI) or Schedule

Performance Index (SPI) or project earned value

tracking are periodically calculated.

performance

6.5 In case of project delay (failure), project

performance Assessment and responsibility is

emphasized on team rather than laying individuals

responsible.

Team Work

7.0 Measurement and Analysis:

7.1 Organization defined and documented procedure for

measuring process performance is practiced?

Process

Measurement

7.2 Data Collection System (DCS) and dedicated

resources are available and DCS is in use for

collecting process measurement data on continuous

DCS


155

basis.

7.3 Process efficiency and effectiveness is measured

individually for each process to optimize process

performance (cost impact).

Process

performance

7.4 A defect log is maintained and measured to

statistically identify trends and causes of defect

occurrence.

Defect log

7.5 Organizational measured and analyzed data

repository established and lessons learned are

shared with the employees to avoid similar defects.

Knowledge base

Library

8.0 Process and Quality Improvement:

8.1 Top management is equally willing to employ

dedicated staff for quality control and process

Improvement.

Resource

Planning

8.2 After process analysis and measurement, top

management is quick at devising corrective actions

for process improvement

Process

improvement

8.3 Top management while investing in quality and

process improvement considered it as an

investment and not a cost burden.

TQM

8.4 Top management establishes plans for quality

improvement activities and continuously gives a

follow up.

Quality Planning

8.5 Continues Process Improvement (CPI) is practiced

dedicatedly and documented to improve quality.

CPI

8.6 The organization has committed funds, staff and

other resources for quality process development

and process assessment.

Org

Commitment


156

8.7 The organization has established a shared

knowledge base library for configuration

management, which can accurately reconstruct

software items from scratch in development

environment.

Configuration

Management

8.8 The organization has dedicated quality Assurance

QA group for tailoring And improving standard

processes.

SPI

8.9 The maturity level of your organization with respect

to quality is somewhere at.

Maturity Level

APPENDIX D INDICATORS & MAPPING ISO 9000

157

APPENDIX D - INDICATORS & MAPPING ISO 9000 ORGANIZATION SIZE & STRUCTURE NO.

VARIABLE (ASQ 2000) ISO 9001 Clauses INDICATORS

1.1 SIZ 0.1 Size 1.2 TND 6.3 Technology/R&D 1.3 STA CMM Statistician (Data Analyst) 1.4 OST 0.1 ORG Structure 1.5 RTN 5.1 e Retention ORGANIZATION CULTURE NO.

VARIABLE ASQ 2000) ISO 9001 Clauses INDICATORS

2.1 OVT 6 Overtime 2.2 SHD 6 Scheduling 2.3 LRN 6.2.2 Learning 2.4 COM 5.5 Communication 2.5 TM 6 Time Management 2.6 TRA 6.2.2 Training 2.7 TST 4 Team Structure 2.8 ASS 6.2.2 / 4.2.4 Assessment ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS QUALITY NO.


3.1 RA 6.1 Resource Allocation 3.2 TR 5.1 Turnover Rate 3.3 SQI 7.3.7 Software Quality Improvement 3.4 QA 7.3.4 Quality Assurance 3.5 MQA 6.1 Management Approach REQUIREMENT MANAGEMENT NO.


4.1 PR 7.1 Project Review 4.2 EST 7.3.4 Quality Assurance 4.3 CS 8.2.1 Customer Satisfaction

4.4 CM 7.3.7 Change management 4.5 OSR CMM Out Sourcing

APPENDIX D INDICATORS & MAPPING ISO 9000

158

PROJECT PLANNING NO.

VARIABLE

(ASQ 2000) ISO 9001 Clauses INDICATORS

5.1 CNF 7.3.6 / 7.5.5 Conformance 5.2 UAT 7.3.5 / 7.3.6 Acceptance Testing 5.3 PPL 7.3.1 Project Planning 5.4 RM 8.5.2 / 8.5.3 Risk Management 5.5 CSTD 8.2.2a coding standards PROJECT MONITORING AND CONTROL

NO. VARIABLE ASQ 2000) ISO 9001 Clauses INDICATORS

6.1 AR 5.6 / 8.2.2 Audits & review 6.2 PM 8.2.3 / 8.2.4 Project monitoring 6.3 PT 8.2.3 / 8.2.4 Project tracking 6.4 PER 8.2.3 Performance 6.5 TW 4 Team Work MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS NO.


7.1 PMR 8.2.3 Process Measurement 7.2 DCS 8.4 DCS 7.3 PPR 8.2.3 Process performance 7.4 DL 8.4 Defect log 7.5 KBL 8.4 Knowledge base Library PROCESS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT NO.


8.1 RP 6.2 Resource Planning 8.2 CA 8.5.1 PI Corrective Action 8.3 TQM 7.3 TQM 8.4 QPL 5.4.2a Quality Planning 8.5 CPI 8.5.1 CPI 8.6 OCM 5.1 Org Commitment 8.7 SCM CMM 8.8 SPI 6.2.1 Process Improvement 8.9 ML CMM Maturity Level

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