ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) plans to initiate second phase of assisting IT companies in achieving various levels of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and ISO-27001 certification soon to enhance exports.
The decision to select number of IT companies for both certifications would be taken during Board's meeting, expected on Friday.
Designed to minimize the high frequency of failures in outsourced software development projects, the CMMI has been developed to assess vendor's ability to complete developmental projects within a specified budget and timeframe.
Official sources at PSEB on Tuesday said the Board launched the programme few years back and assisted four companies to achieve CMMi level-3 and CMMi level-5 while it also assisted 18 companies to achieve CMMi Level-2.
The objective of running the activities was to initiate CMMI activities in Pakistan and create a base for CMMI implementation at the mass level.
The sources said PSEB also conducted a survey to gauge benefits taken by IT companies from CMMI and statistics of survey results indicated that growth of Human Resource strength increased from 31.60 to 36.27 per cent, employee retention rate from 71.77 to 82.73 per cent, reduction in project rework from 38.67 to 19.36 per cent, reduction in project delays from 34.64 to 16.35 per cent, increase in export revenue from 50.00 to 65.98 per cent and also increase in domestic revenue was witnessed from 35.00 to 146.59 per cent.
They said repeated studies have confirmed that less than 25 percent of software development projects ever meet their objectives.
Like the ISO 9000 standard, the CMMI is also a model-based software process improvement approach and PSEB recommends that, for the growing number of Pakistani software and service companies that are already ISO 9000-certified and are now hoping to achieve a higher level of process maturity - should consider qualifying for a CMM certification as well.
They said this model addresses certain fundamental business decisions not supported by the ISO-9000 or other systems of product quality. The CMMI enables companies to better serve their customers interests by providing answers to the customers decision problems.
The second phase is aimed at providing CMMI level consultancy and appraisal assistance to IT companies which was 80 per cent borne by PSEB and 20 per cent by the company in the first phase. The sources said the new ratio of the cost would also be decided by Board's meeting.
The main activities, to be carried out during execution of the project include workshops where companies would be trained at a single location and will result in cost-savings, otherwise these activities will need to be repeated for every company separately.
PSEB had successfully completed two different programmes on CMMI so far under its initiative - Standardization of Pakistani IT Industry.
The first project launched at a cost of Rs39.9 million was aimed at bringing IT companies to CMMI Level 3 or above while the second project completed with a cost of Rs39.3 million was aimed at bringing IT companies to CMMI Level 2.
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