On the 4th and 5th of November, the 2nd Central and Eastern European Conference on Software Process Improvement took place in Budapest. Over 50 people from the region (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey …) as well as from Western Europe and USA took part at the event. The event was organized within the frame of the Hungarian Quality Week.
A wide range of experiences were shared from various business domains (Automotive, Telecommunication, Bank, Defense) and various countries (Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Russia). For more information on the programme please visit:
Multi-model process improvement is being one of main themes addressed during the conference both in presentations and in a panel session. A multitude of models have been developed during the years, each of them announcing a high return on investment when being implemented. Furthermore, in many companies, improvement initiatives are being started concurrently, sometimes as a certification exercise or as a real improvement programme. Pat Kirwan from the Software Engineering Institute (Father Institution of CMMI®) presented the results of an investigation being made on that subject. He concluded that multi-model (called process technology) approaches can be successful when the choice of technology and implementation is aligned to the business goals of the organization and improvement infrastructure are not being built separately for each initiative. During the panel session experiences how to combine successfully models have been presented e.g. ISO 9001 and CMMI®.
Other buzzword very often used those days was “Agile”. During the first day a tutorial was organized, being focused on the issue of quality and quality assurance in agile world, reviewing the benefits that agile methods have brought to software development. They give a flavor of how testers and developers achieve quality in an agile fashion. A common understanding of what agile methods really are was very helpful (as noticed in survey by participants) since Agile Software development is very often put in contradiction with process oriented practices. Actually this is based on a total misconception of the two concepts. An animated panel session actually took place to re-establish the truth. Agile covers a set of detailed management and engineering practices. Those are actually very complementary to CMMI® process improvement principles. CMMI set requirements that should be fulfilled by a process (“What”) whereas Agile methodology is a one possible instantiation of the “How” i.e concrete techniques to be used (“How”). The panel members and audience agreed that the word/concepts Agile is often misused or misunderstood. “Too many Agile organisations are hackers and too many CMMI® organisations are paralyzed”. It was agreed that AGILE requires a cultural shift in people and managers mind, requiring specific stronger soft skills.
Human factors in process improvement were actually mentioned several times in presentations. Markus Sprunck, Head of Team SW-Engineering Methods & Process at HVB Information Services GmbH gave an interesting comparison on how processes were perceived in their German and Italian subsidiaries. As Markus said, “there is not one good and several bad ways, one needs to get rid of the typical cultural stereotypes. One needs to understand the other party, its culture and consequently the reason why he/she is acting a certain way”.
We are looking for the Next Edition of the conference in the next year.
Last Change: 08.01.2010
