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NIIT software business assessed at SEI-CMM Level 5

Global software solutions major NIIT Limited has been assessed for quality standard SEI-CMM Level 5.

This puts NIIT among 12 organisations worldwide to be assessed at this level.

T O D A Y

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NIIT's software facilities were successfully assessed to be performing at the highest maturity level of 5 as per the US based Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model in an assessment conducted by Global Systems Technology, USA.

The SEI-CMM is a widely recognised and globally acclaimed framework for assessing and improving the software development process.

The key goal of the SEI's five-level Capability Maturity Model and SEI Assessments is to enable an organisation to improve product quality, increase productivity and reduce cycle time for development.

This assessment signifies NIIT's capability to manage and control software development risks related to the project, organisation, process and technology in software development projects that it undertakes.

NIIT Managing Director Rajendra S Pawar says, "Quality at NIIT integrates personal quality, individual excellence, innovation and software quality processes. Assessment at SEI-CMM Level 5 will significantly enhance software quality and reduce cycle time for our global customers."

Richard F Storch, principal, Global Systems Technology, who conducted the two-week-long assessment process at NIIT, says, "I am extremely impressed by the NIIT's software professionals and the software engineering process team. The integration of the quality function is deeply ingrained into the entire process architecture."

NIIT was assessed at SEI-CMM Level 3 in July 1997. NIIT's software teams in a 'Declaration to Excel' signed before Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, in December 1997, had pledged to improve software process levels to the highest maturity level 5 by December 18, 1999. By being formally assessed at SEI-CMM Level 5 full three months ahead of time.

NIIT President Software Solutions Arvind Thakur says, "Our eyes are now set at achieving new global benchmarks in customer satisfaction, developer productivity, lowest defect levels and employee satisfaction. This will help us provide greater value multiplication to our discerning global customers at the same time leading to enhance the worldwide wealth of NIIT's stakeholders."

NIIT Senior Vice-President for Software Solutions Shrikant Inamdar says, "I am proud to have led the 2nd team of Indian software professionals to be assessed at SEI-CMM Level 5." Inamdar was responsible for creating world's first SEI-CMM Level 5 organisation as general manager of Motorola at Bangalore in 1993.

Capability Maturity Model for Software was developed in 1986 by the Software Engineering Institute located at Carnegie Mellon University.

Over the years, it has emerged as a framework for organisational improvement. CMM focuses on process management and quality improvement concepts to software development and maintenance.

A unique, revolutionary path, CMM increases an organisation's software process maturity in 5 stages. The framework defines5 levels of maturity: Initial, repeatable, defined, managed and optimising. Each maturity level is well-defined evolutionary plateau towards achieving a mature software process.

CMM Level 5 is known as the optimising level. At this level, the organisation is continuously striving to improve the range of its process capability, thereby improving the process performance of their projects.

Improvement occurs both by incremental enhancements and by innovations using new technologies and methods.

Software Engineering Institute is a federally funded research and development centre sponsored by the US Department of Defence. The mission of SEI is to provide leadership in advancing the state of the practice of software engineering to improve the quality of systems that depend on software. SEI accomplishes this mission by promoting the evolution of Software Engineering from an ad hoc, labour-intensive activity to a discipline that is well managed and supported by technology.

SEI's Capability Maturity Model assists organisations in maturing their people, process, and technology assets to improve long-term business performance. The SEI has developed CMMs for software, people and software acquisition and assisted in the development of CMMs for Systems Engineering and Integrated Product Development.

Global System Technology, California, is an authorised lead assessment organisation providing consultancy, training, process engineering and metric programme development for clients in the US, Europe and Asia.

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