ITresources’ Jim Cisneros was the featured speaker at the February 2005 meeting of the Orange County Chapter of the SCQAA (Southern California Quality Assurance Association).

Jim is the Vice President of Systems Development at ITresources and has overall responsibility for all application development and support activities for the company’s clients. He provides the strategic direction for systems development, including leading the initiative for ITresources’ System Development Methodology to become Capability Maturity Model (CMM) certified.

ITresources moved from SEI-CMM Level 1 to Level 5 in less than 4 years. The company is currently undertaking its CMMI (CMM Integration) certification in order to extend its standards and practices to the systems engineering or operations area.

The Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model (SEI-CMM) has become the de-facto standard for assessing an organization’s capabilities in software development. While thousands of companies around the world have been assessed and certified, the top rating of “Level 5” has been achieved by just over 100 companies world wide and by only 14 in the United States.

Jim’s presentation at the SCQAA meeting focused on what drove a young Southern California IT services firm to pursue the difficult goal of achieving CMM Level 5. He talked about how ITresources went about it, how long it took, what worked well, what lessons were learned and what the benefits have been to the company and its staff. The SCQAA members were particularly interested in the benefits of CMM certification from

the perspective of software quality and testing practices. It was an enthusiastic group with many questions about the certification process itself, the impact of integrating the standards into a company’s culture, the budget and training requirements and the marketing and sales advantages.

For those attending this interesting meeting, the ‘take-aways’ included:

	Being able to measure and compare performance is critical to assessing your results. CMM is an excellent tool for defining consistent processes and standards and measuring your results against them.
	If you plan to pursue CMM certification, ensure you have internal executive support starting at the top.
	Recognize that ongoing training of your staff in the CMM processes will be essential.
	Utilize a professional SEI certified assessor to guide your organization through the process and make sure the methodology works for you.
	Treat CMM certification as a project with a formal project plan and accountability for deliverables and schedules.