Netsol, a Pakistan software and services company based in Islamabad recently have made public their status of CMMi Level 5. For the ceremony, there was, as usual, a large event with all the political personalities involved who came onto stage one by one and with the much repeated fanfare (maybe our politicians are CMMi level as well) and process congratulated Netsol on its achievement. Ofcourse Netsol didnt hold back either and its been giving full color Ads in national newspapers proclaiming its new status. Ofcourse you need to be aware that CMMi models are usually done through self appraisals to start, and usually certain divisions of a company work towards being “certified”. Its also upto the company to publish if they indeed are a CMMi level or not, so I dont know WHEN Netsol was CMMi 5 compliant, just that they announced it this week.

In this case, Netsol’s lahore development center was recognized. To illustrate, take a larger company. Take IBM. Different divisions of IBM in different regions, say Global services in the US and Global services in Australia, might have different CMMi Levels. Much like ISO, a consultant approve by Carnegie’ SEI will come and do an appraisal and then give you a level (1-5).

Also, Kudos to our government for supporting the initiative. (See… I give them credit when its due!)
So, the real question is, do we really care? is it really important? Well, actually it is. The Capability Maturity Model, a very hot topic in software engineering nowadays is a concept that comes from the SEI institute within Carnegie Mellon University (where yours truly was admitted but didnt go…cause UT is better!! Go Longhorns! lol ). Essentially, the idea behind it is process improvement for business benefit, which can be specifically applied to software houses. Who all uses it as a guideline? Infosys, Wipro, IBM, HP, Nasa, Accenture, JP Morgan, Intel, Nokia, General Dynamics (these guys make the F16 and al its software) and the list goes on.

Who all is CMMi Level 5? To name a few, IBM Global services, Infosys, HP, CSC, Logica CMG,Accenture, Motorola,Cognizant, and again the list goes on.

Im no CMM expert, but what i am told by people performing these processes, CMMi level 3 is the sign of a pretty decent company..there is massive benefit in going from 0 to 3, and from 3 to 5 the process improvement/benefits are not as apparent as when you go from 0 to 3, (but hey, what do i know, wink).

Whats interesting is that most of the fast growing outsourcing Indian firms, ie Cognizant, Tata, Satyam,etc are all CMMi5 compliant already.Mindtree probably is too. Hmmm. We have one. hmmmm. :) Will the next CMMi 5 company please stand up? please stand up!

Info on the CMM model : http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/general/general.html

Netsol : Netsoltek.com

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