The building blocks of any sustainable delivery excellence infrastructure in software organizations are – people, process, and technology. By focusing their efforts on these three dimensions, organizations are able to design and implement meaningful process improvement journeys.

High maturity organizations – those that have successfully implemented the processes and practices defined in CMMI^® Levels 4 and 5 – often find that while their software process capability rises, their people capability is not able to keep pace with the evolving needs of their business. This happens largely because in a process improvement journey, the focus on people dimensions is often limited to what the CMMI^® mandates – having people with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the activities required, and supporting them with the right tools and training infrastructure. While this approach is able to achieve the objective of improving process capability, it does not necessarily create a long-term harmony between the software practices being implemented, and the people implementing them.

This presentation analyzes the causes, and the possible implications, of the above phenomenon. It proposes a framework for sustainable delivery excellence, using the CMMI^® and the PCMM^® as complementary models that support each other in creating a harmonious organizational environment. To illustrate the hypothesis, it traces the journey of an organization that uses these models in conjunction, to meet its’ long-term business goals.

Meet Anand Kumar
Anand Kumar heads the Process and Quality Management at Fiserv, and is responsible for all process, quality, and testing functions, including IT Quality, BPO Business Excellence, Testing Center of Excellence, Information Security, Risk and Compliance.

He comes with over 22 years of industry experience including a range of functions such as application delivery, relationship management, process improvement, quality assurance, testing, and IT risk management. His involvement with CMM® /CMMI® goes back more than 14 years. He has implemented these models in organizations, and led them through assessment / appraisal journeys.