SPI Models have standards

Software Quality in business has a fundamental process which is the improvement phase. This process has been developing throughout the years and some models have been created to make standards.

And as the meme says, “professionals have standards”, so to be in a competitive scope with process improvement, one must understand the basics of some of these models.

1. CMMI

This is the Capability Maturity Model Integration, which is focused on streamline process improvement. It was developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and it helps organizations to decrease risks in software development.

The way it helps with this is by evaluation three specific areas: Process development, service establishment and management, and service acquisition. In the end, it creates a consistent performance improvement.

2. TSP / PSP

The Team Software Process and the Personal Software Process are focused on team based development and improvement. They are self-directed teams that have goals to achieve and have their own internal processes and plans.

The meaning of having both within the same scope is that engineers should start with Personal Software Process, and then move on with Team Software Process.

PSP as a first step is to teach the software engineer the principles and main concepts of process-based development. Then, Team Software Process is the next step. In TSP the main goal is that each of the engineers in the teams know how internal processes work and how to achieve team goals with cooperation and management.

3. ISO-15504

One of the most famous standards, this model was first made to the focused exclusively on software development processes. But, it expanded to cover project management, configuration management, quality assurance, and some other aspects of the topic.

To learn it, one must learn the 7 parts of it, like a book. It starts with concepts and vocabulary, the really basics, and it ends with assessment of organizational maturity. This standard is really key importance for a quality manager or an IT assessor to become a professional.

4. MOPROSOFT

A standard for process modeling in software engineering. This model was developed by the Mexican Association for Quality in Software Engineering. Its creation began with the problem that CMMI and ISO-15504 where to complex and complicated for small and medium companies, so based from both, MOPROSOFT was created.

The inspiration came from those other standards, and it is divided in a structure of 3 categories. The high direction category, te manager category and the operation category. It is explained as a pyramid which starts from the high direction, then ideas and processes are delivered to the bottom ones.

This kind of standard is really common in small companies in Mexico and it is required to be known by managers and CEOs.

5. IDEAL

The IDEAL standard is a software process improvement model, it was developed in 1996 by also the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. The main goal of it is to give IDEAL guidelines for organizations that are starting or continuing with software process improvement.

It consists of five main phases that explain its letters.

• The initial phase, which defines the roles and responsibilities for the main infrastructure.
• The diagnosing phase, where the vision and strategic plans come into place, this phase looks back to past improvements that have been made.
• The establishing phase, this is where the goals of the process improvement are stablished.
• The acting phase, where the solutions are created and piloted. The deployment happens and work is bein done.
• The leveraging phase, the last one which evaluates through what happened and what can be improved for the next IDEAL.