Mastek embarks on CMM journey to infuse greater technology culture

Tarun Narayan in Mumbai

To accelerate growth and cope with the downturn, Indian information technology firm Mastek has launched a new practice that integrates technology culture and management styles through a system called “the capability maturity (CMM) model”.

The broad-based application of the model is to inculcate and equip the software professionals with a culture of aggressiveness to improve their technological processes and systems, and to derive capabilities essential for collective organisational growth.

“CMM is about qualitatively describing the principles and practices underlying software process and how these can act as a progressive tool to enhance the organisational efficiency and discipline,” says Mr P Rajasekharan, general manager, Organisation Processing Group (OPG), Mastek.

“The system aims at measuring the maturity and adeptness to customise a technological initiative for creating focus and discipline to ensure business success,” says Mr Rajasekharan.

To enforce the defined transition in the organisation, the CMM model is organised into five maturity levels:
* The first step is the “Initial”. In this first level to attaining higher organisational growth, the underlying ground rule that comes as a maxim is that the software process is ad hoc, and occasionally even chaotic. There are certain defined processes that have to be brought into force by the professionals as a challenge to redefine the maxim and prove that the processes are about “orderliness and discipline”. The extent to which the processes can be successfully attained will, therefore, depend on the intensity of individual capabilities rendered in the organisation.

* The second step is called “Repeat”. Here, the necessary process discipline is in place that enables the professionals to repeat the earlier successes on projects with similar applications. “ This means we are repeating and replicating initiatives that have got in some measure of success for the organisation in the previous testing,” Mr Rajashekharan adds.

* The third is “Defined”. This is the stage where the growth parameters are defined in terms of a sharp-edged knowledge about the technological process that needs to be utilised by the software experts.

* The fourth is “Managed”. Under this, detailed measures of the software process and product quality are collected. Both the software process and products are to be quantitatively understood and controlled. This is ensured by sensitising the inhouse talent.

* The last step is “Optimizing”. A continuous process improvement is enabled by quantitative feedback from the process and from piloting innovative ideas and technologies.

The prime agenda that the model aims to deliver, according to Mr Rajasekharan, is to have each key process area described in terms of the key practices that contribute to satisfying its goals. The model is directed at knowing how the professionals have been putting the process into implementable solutions as an end purpose objective in the business.