Quality management in software enterprises…

Quality management system in software enterprises is becoming more and more effective. However, the number of enterprises developing their own systems is still limited...

In order for software enterprises to share experience with each other and exchange some concerns relating to quality management model, HCA and ICT Partnership held the conference “Quality management system in software enterprise” on 16th Aug 2007 in Hochiminh City.

The main topic of the conference focused on how to develop quality management process as well as some criteria and popular software development models such as CMMi, ISO 9001:2000 presented by experienced experts from leading software enterprises like FCG Vietnam, GSC, TMS, PSD, FPT Software and New Millennium.

Not totally optimist reality

Said Mr. Tran Lac Hong, vice-president of HCA, quality management system is the utmost concern of many software enterprises as well as software outsourcing customers because this is an important criteria to evaluate prestige and experience of an enterprise. Nevertheless, according to a survey one year ago, among software enterprise members of HCA, up to 60% did not have certifications and were not interested in quality management system.

“A majority of this kind of enterprise has small size and focuses on domestic market”, said Mr. Hong. According to a survey carried out by Carnegie Mellon University, up to March 2007, Vietnam had only 10 software enterprise using the model for evaluating CMM/ CMMi (Capability Maturity Model/ Integration) software production capacity.
Mr. Hong, however, rest assured that it is not imperative for small-sized to develop Quality management system. They can learn from experience and then apply flexibly into current production process to improve and upgrade their own product quality.

The necessary of flexible application.

Mr. Nguyen Cao Tung (from New Millennium Enterprise) said that quality in software quality management didn’t depend on itself only but also on other factors such as cost, flexibility/efficiency, dependability and speed/ productivity. A software enterprise should take use of all these factors to reach the highest quality and productivity at the lowest cost.

According to him, in order to successfully develop a quality management system, each enterprise needs, first of all, a leadership principle comprehensive with the outlook and long-term business objective. Besides that, an enterprise should know how to balance inner factors (internal capacity ) and outer ones (customers). He emphasized: “Working process must transparency and so do quality. In order to attract customers’ attention, a software enterprise should guarantee for both products and services”.
From the same view point, Mr. Ngo Van Toan (GCS Enterprise) added that an efficient quality management system should have the application and transfer from the top leaders of the company . “To GCS, quality management is an independent system and GSC only applies the main features of rational Unified Process. With the model that GCS is applying, capacity is the key factor and training plays a very important role”, said Mr. Toan.

Mr. Do Van Ngoc (FCG Vietnam) said that the key factor which helped FCG Vietnam reached CMMi level 5 in Jan-2005 ( focused on CMMi Initiative since 2001) was the comprehensive spirit from board of directors to all staff and the most important point was that the company had applied the available software production processes.

Mr. Ngoc told that on average, FCGV reached one-rank higher of CMMi for the period of 10 months. With the quality management FCG Vietnam is using, this is an open-structure in order to adapt with many different criteria and quality management models and a precious experience drawn from applying CMMi is that there is a need to maintain the awareness of Board of Directors. Along with that, FCG itself also develops software and tools to manage the current quality management system.

Mr. Tran Bang Viet (TMA) told that quality management system in general and quality criteria in private are used for all departments and TMA also develops a database system called “ Historical Data/ Project Knowledge Base” to reduce searching time when there’s a need for referencing or using at other projects. He added, “In the up-coming time (estimated Quarter 4/2008), TMA will upgrade into CMMi level 8 for Service 1.0).

Anh Khoa Reporter

(Source: PC World VN )

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