Mastek, just assessed at Level 4 of the CMM-SEI, joins a select band of 30 companies worldwide which have been ranked at Level 4. The assessment team included SEI former director Ron Radice, Ajay Batra and Santhanakrishnan from QAI of India.

The CMM for software developed by the SEI is a framework that describes the key elements of an effective software process. The model is an evolutionary improvement path for software organisations from an ad hoc, immature process to a mature and disciplined one. At present, the path is encompassed by 5 levels of maturity. The guidelines basically assist software companies to gain control of their processes for developing and maitaining software and to evolve towards a culture of software engineeringand management excellence.

Ashank Desai said that with assessment of Level 4, there would a tremendous thrust in international projects, mainly offshore development assignments.

Mastek is at present doing major projects for companies in the US and Europe and has been steadily focussing on the domestic market. ``The achievement is significant from the fact that our focus area is offshore development, where every client will be interested to know whether the servicing company has any international standards to show,'' Desai said. He added that a growth in business from now on would be a derived benefit rather than a direct one.

He said that Mastek is mooting the idea of applying this process standards in some of the areas which are not covered under Level 4 such as customer relationship management (CRM).