Thesis Proposal 41209

Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………….…...1 Theoretical framework ……………………………………………………...2 Conceptual framework ……………………………………………………...3 Objectives …………………………………………………………………...4 Hypothesis ……………………………………………………………….. ...5 Study Design ………………………………………………………………..6 Proposed chapters of the study ………………………………………….......7 Problems and limitations ……………………………………………………8 Proposed time frame for the project ………………………………………...9 References …………………………………….…………………………...10 Declaration ………………………………………………………………...11

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Introduction: Software industry has major part of all businesses and all industries need it, but due to large number of vendors now it is compulsory to accomplish and prove capabilities for getting software projects. World is now a global village and international certifications have gained more values for achieving business of high level organizations. In software industry there are many international certifications CMMI is one of them. CMMI is an acronym and stands for Capability Maturity Model Integration. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) refers CMMI for process improvement. CMMI is a guideline to improve the processes of organizations for providing quality products on-time and within budget. CMMI have 5 maturity levels (ML) from 1 to 5 and an organization having ML5 (Maturity Level) means having best processes for customer’s satisfaction. In CMMI 2009 impact three types of organizations are 1. Contractor for Military/Government 2. commercial in-house 3. and Military/Government Agency The main organizational type which is looking engrossed in CMMI is commercial inhouse organizations [3]. Worldwide 72% of adopters are commercial in-house organizations [3], while except non-USA 90.8% adapters are commercial in-house organizations. Return on Investment in CMMI is shown in Fig 1 and common lame excuse for not adopting CMMI is less employees and resources [8] but facts shows that 51% of total appraised CMMI organizations having employees 1 to 100 [3]. CMMI adoption trend is gradually increasing in software industries of world [1, 2, and 3].

Figure 1 Quantitative Measure of CMMI [3]

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So from literature review it is evident that CMMI is a best practice model for commercial in house organizations, but blindly going and even getting CMMI can increase risks for organizations [9, 10, and 12]. The CMMI does not tell you when to establish a baseline. It just encourages you to do so [11]. Focus on CMMI processes and having a specific CMMI certification level as a goal isolated the teams from each other and created distrust [6]. Therefore this research has main emphasis on identifying risks involved in adoption of CMMI and ways to mitigate those risks. It will also provide a pre and post analysis for organizations. Pre analysis will help for scrutiny of needed resources and post analysis will find gaps and will provide guidelines to removes those gaps. The research will be exploratory type. Geographically it will be limited to Pakistan but most factors will be applicable globally as criteria for selection of companies will be generic. The results will be taken from analyzing 72 projects from 15 domestic CMMI deployment companies. Also results will show significant affects of practicing ISO 9001:2000 parallel to CMMI.

Objectives: Several research objectives can be identified and formulated as questions, some of them as follows: 1. checking feasibility of adoption CMMI in small in-house organizations 2. Finding risks involved in adoption of CMMI 3. Mitigating the risks involved in PI through CMMI 4. Reducing time to achieve CMMI ML2 from 18 month to 12 months and ML3 5. Why process improvement (PI) is required for small organizations. 6. How can we go for ML2 and ML3 with limited resources 7. General guidelines for PI in small organizations without CMMI appraisal. 8. directions; when CMMI goes to fail

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Study Design The author is embedded in the companies as a visiting member for the duration of this master thesis. He will participate and observe the project work and the process improvement effort. Data is gathered by interviewing members of the company, observing the work done, and by analyzing work artifacts and other available documents. This research approach is therefore an ethnographical study [2]. To analyze the gathered data the author is reflecting on the observations, relating them to literature, triangulation, and by trying to identify patterns. Since the company is rather small, it is impossible to use statistical data analysis techniques. The author is aware of that a qualitative empirical study is not concerned with collecting verifiable data, but instead with understanding a social world, which is continuously in the process of construction [7]. According to Wohlin et al. [9] software engineering is mainly a social process, therefore an empirical study is a valid research methodology in this context. PSEB also conducts research and reports regarding Pakistan’s IT industry. These studies prove insightful for strategic policy and decision-makers, the Government and stakeholders in the IT industry. PSEB also conducts research and reports regarding Pakistan’s IT industry. These studies prove insightful for strategic policy and decision-makers, the Government and stakeholders in the IT industry. PSEB has also coordinated with various international research bodies, such as Gartner, Forrester, and the IDC. PSEB has purchased their reports regarding the global IT industry and its growth, and reports outlining which factors can make Pakistan a strategic player in the highly competitive outsourcing industry.

Proposed time frame for the thesis: The roadmap for the thesis will be as follows: 1: Listing of All software houses having minimum 25 employees. Method: Pakistan software export board website will be used for it Time allocated: 2 days

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2: short listing of organizations. Method: criteria written will be made using the pseb scheme for it. Time allocated: 4 days 3: contracting with organizations. Method: official and through proper channel will be used Time allocated: 2 days 4. Concentrating on 5 main organizations which have different Maturity Levels. Method: organizations willingness and accessibility will be kept in consideration. Time allocated: 1 week 5. Risks will be analyzed. Method: latest research will be used for it, so that organizations get success with minimal resources and costs. Time allocated: 6 weeks 6. Implementation of framework Method: training workshops will be conducted for orgs. Time allocated: 5week 7. Results and conclusion Time allocated: 1week

Research Methodology: Beside the large number of research methodologies existent the research methodology intended to use in order to validate the results obtained in this research is the Action Research [35-39]. Action research is a type of research that involves researchers and practitioners which act together on a particular set of activities. Action research has been called by many different names like: participatory research, collaborative inquiry, action learning, and contextual action research [38] all meaning the same. But action research can be defined in a simple way as “learning by doing”. In other words, we can say that this kind of research is an iterative process. First, the problem is defined and, then, we do something to solve it, verify if our solution is successful and if it is not successful we try again to find another solution [38]. The fact that this research could be done in a cyclic way was an important factor to let us choose this as our research methodology. The capability to provide a solution to our problem, analyze the impact of the solution and having the possibility to change this solution was the major factor for our choice.

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References: [1]. Pseb [2]. Survey [3]. CMMI® Impact August 2009, Carnegie Mellon University ® CMMI is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark ,Anita Carleton [4]. SEI Process Maturity Profile, March 2009. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/appraisal-program/profile/ [5]. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/06.reports/pdf/06tr004.pdf [6]. Mads Troels Hansen and Hans Baggesen, “From CMMI and isolation to Scrum, Agile, Lean and collaboration” [7]. David J. Anderson, “Stretching Agile to fit CMMI Level 3” [8]. M. Staples, M. Niazi, R. Jeffery, A. Abrahams, P. Byatt and R. Murphy, “An exploratory study of why organizations do not adopt CMMI,” Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 80, no. 6, 2007, pp. 883-895. [9]. From CMMI and isolation to Scrum, Agile, Lean and collaboration [10]. Problems and Pitfalls in a CMMI level 3 to level 4 Migration Process [11]. Margaret K. Kulpa, Kent A. Johnson, “Interpreting the CMMI”, A process improvement approach, 2nd Ed, ISBN 978-1-4200-6052-2 [12]. Paula Monteiro, Ricardo J. Machado and Rick Kazman, “Inception of Software Validation and Verification Practices within CMMI Level 2”

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