It sure is difficult. It just does not seem to move forward. The main problem is that ours is a small software firm. Just 8 years old(yes, I know it is very long in this industry, but process oriented and business-wise, we are still young). And the problem is that we do not have a right process -flow yet. With all the requirements and work coming from our parent company in Switzerland, we enter the scene only after considerable stages of SDLC is complete.



So our first mission: to create all the steps in a suitable SDLC.



We have checked the SDLC models given by Department of Justice. Well, too tight. Then there is the IEEE 12207 standard WBS for the entire SDLC. And I checked the one provided in www.rspa.com . It seems we have adapt our own small subset of SDLC task list. What we hope is we can complete it this week itself, since we are almost doing all these steps in an unstructured way.

How do we go about it? First step- get the information on the issue. Downloaded and printed two documents: ‘Capability Maturity Model :A Tutorial ' and ‘A Software Process Framework for the SEI Capability Maturity Model’ both from ‘Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University’.

Web site to visit is ‘SEI’.



But still confused. The second document mentioned above is a big one, with detailed description and checklists for the different levels of SW-CMM. And I stop the printing after I completed the listing for level 2. Even that seems to be quite a daunting task to verify that we are doing everything in a copybook style. But again the doubts creep in: should we use this outdated model or is it better we try for CMMI standards?



For us(a small firm), quite a lot of information like the above mentioned tutorial, is available on SW-CMM free of cost from the net, from SEI’s own website – just because they have almost discarded it. Now I know that SW-CMM is in the sunset point.



We have defined out overall goal : To achieve ISO 9000:2000 certification in 6 months time, and while doing so, create the procedures in accordance with the SW-CMM level 3.



First step: Check the requirements of SW-CMM level 2 and 3, and then determine how far we are from an ideal situation by matching our SDLC with a copybook one.

Yes, we are also going to get the ISO certification. Since ours is a Software manufacturing firm, a CMM level 3 or above is the desired qualification compared to an ISO certification. But the difference seems, we can definitely get the ISO certification with our present standards and financial situation, in another 5 months down the lane, while we can just try our level best to work in a CMM specified level and claim so(we are told the amount of good money required for CMM auditing/implementation is quite heavy)

Anyway, we are confused, and do not know if we want to set our eyes on CMM level 3 or 4 or CMMI etc etc. We do not know much about this area. But now we do have a person in our firm for the next six months, who will be doing only these works. He is a trained ISO auditor/consultant. That much better.

So, if ISO + CMM is a challenge, we meet it. If a duty, we perform it. If it is a promise, we fulfill it.

We have started our discussions: