Contents
		Introduction  The benefits of quality  Hard to measure  Case study  Executive summary

Certification costs, but who's buying?
While its association with the growing Indian outsourcing sector has given it strong brand recognition, CMM is by no means the only certification that companies need to be thinking about. There are, for example, the above-mentioned SPICE, which is an ISO-standard process assessment methodology; TickIT, a UK/Sweden-derived software quality standard with global support; and Six Sigma, a manufacturing and service-focused quality process that has recently been extended to the world of software development.

An outflow of the emphasis on software development process has been the promulgation of related project management best-practice standards. PRINCE (Projects IN a Controlled Environment) and its successor PRINCE2 have become the UK's de facto project management methodologies, while many organizations have seen significant process improvements by following the Project Management Institute's PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), which addresses 40 key project management competencies.

There are also BS6079, a British Standard that guides general managers, project managers, project support staff, and educators; and the Japanese Body of Knowledge, which was recently released by the Japanese Project Management Forum and takes a more tower-like approach designed to facilitate management of multiple projects simultaneously.

With so many standards to choose from, it's not always clear what certification means--either for companies choosing a methodology to follow, or for those assessing the qualifications of potential suppliers. And, as Avaya's experience highlights, many companies can absorb the benefits of certification without actually going through the bother and massive expense that's required for formal audits.

Indeed, financial limitations often mean that smaller companies are significantly disadvantaged when it comes to certification: the substantial auditing and documentation processes typical of formal quality standards require a level of detail and business process granularity that can often be missing in smaller companies. That's not to say that smaller companies can't benefit from measured process improvement, but rather that current large-scale quality religions have yet to accommodate the needs of smaller suppliers.

Software Engineering Australia, which has long taken a central role in encouraging Australian companies to pursue process improvement through standards such as CMMI, believes it has found a way to reconcile the growing need for demonstrated competency with the smaller resource base of SMEs, which make up the majority of software developers. That way is SEA's SoftwareMark, a certification program that combines many elements of CMMI with the European Software Institute's methodologies into a low-cost package for SMEs.

SoftwareMark was recently trialed successfully in Spain (where the ESI is based) and has attracted interest from national software bodies in Mexico, Bulgaria, and Taiwan. By bringing high-level project management competency to smaller companies, it could well become a global standard for software suppliers wanting to demonstrate competence without having to meet the almost Draconian requirements of heavyweight certifications like ISO and CMM.

"In the next two or three years, any company that's not adopting certification frameworks will get left behind," says Nathan Brumby, CEO of SEA. "It's more of a question of how it is represented and who pays for it. We are dealing with an industry that doesn't have enough money; for SMEs any money is too much money. That's one of the big inhibitors. And one of the challenges in Australia is that it's very hard to sell something here first--but if you sell it somewhere else it seems to be a lot easier to sell here."

By focusing on both momentary and continuous process improvement, SoftwareMark could be particularly useful for SMEs, who lack the financial and people resources to make up for mistakes and inefficiencies during development. They also need formalised ways of reusing code and otherwise improving efficiency of the development process. This would make SoftwareMark the software equivalent of the Australian Wool Council's successful WoolMark certification program, providing an industry benchmark that becomes more meaningful as it's more broadly adopted. Furthermore, its lower cost makes it palatable for a much broader range of organizations.