I have started to write this Blog from my little experience over Software Industries in Bangladesh. I got two comments in my previous post from two experienced people. And I guess they are right from their perspective. Yes you are right when you are saying:

“To me the most important decision for a successful project is to choose right people at right time. Once you have a competent workforce, they should come up with what is best suited for them.”

This is right not only for SW development but also for all kinds of industries. But I don’t know Vaia whether you read the mails about ‘Lack of Quality People in IT Industry’ which was been discussed in SQABD few months ago.

Ok, let’s share some stories that I heard from one of my senior colleague. When he was in his previous company he used to take interviews to recruit new QA persons in that company. One of his most frequently asked question was: Why you want to join in QA? Mostly in reply he got answers like: “I need a job”, “I don’t know (or not good at) programming”, “Well I saw the advertisement and …….”, “It has a better offer (money)”, “Big company”, “Testing is easier than coding” bla bla bla… I guess these do mean something!

Well you can’t ignore these unless you change the view of QA and that must show the difference with Testers. QA’s task only to ensure the Quality of the Product but also to ensure the Quality of the Process (am I wrong?). I don’t know whether you met or not but I did, to whom Process is totally a new thing when they heard Process and even they question me back – ‘what is that?’ But I guess these should be in your considerations whenever you are thinking in perspective of Bangladesh but there should be a certain limit.

Well... well … I was in Process Maturity and now I’m with the recruitment, sorry. But recruitment should also be included in your process, in resource management plan. It should be defined in your process how much of the development gets delayed when you are in shortage of human resource (when someone from the team leaves the company) thus your success rate remains in a consistent state and you are not blamed from your management as they are getting as the process has been defined. And also recruitment time, quality, training these things also – so to get whatever is expected and process doesn’t get blamed and neither you.

Now one more scenario (also heard from my seniors): one big company (in Bangladesh) established a process and it took a long time established the process and hard labor of Process Engineering team. But the first product after the process establishment failed to get the market. This also means something.

Now I have one question (I have my answers but it will be better to have some views from others) – Why processes are needed to be established in Software Development?

Process Maturity in perspective of Bangladesh

Well I don’t know whether I have the proper knowledge to write about it or not. I’m just trying to share my views and that is all. My experience in software industry is not much but from some point of view some of may agree with me. I’m trying to focus some point from my R&D and knowledge-base.

To develop software every software development company needs a process. This process may be defined in bookish language or undefined (customized). Thing is that you need at least a process to develop it. Big (and few middle) size companies most follow structured (defined or customized) processes. But what about the other companies (small size and rest of the middle size companies)? And specially when you are talking in perspective of Bangladesh. I guess most of IT people in Bangladesh know about the local software market and what is condition of current IT industry in Bangladesh. Though it is better than it was before but still we are far behind from where we should be.

Small or most middle size companies which still starving for resources (both human and technology) are failing to meet the deadline and a quality delivery most time. Yet they maintain a process – their own process. How much matured their process is? – BIG QUESTION!

Now talking about Big and few middle size companies where structured processes are maintained. It may be few but not rare that some of these companies are also failing to meet deadline for a quality delivery. Less quality product delivered within time – I’m not counting those for these companies. So the process maturity is still a big question for these companies.

Now come to the Process Maturity Framework that we have around us. You can say – Follow CMM (I don’t know any other Maturity Framework exists or not). But then you have to think – how many companies can afford CMM (considering time and resource)? You can’t say all the companies which are not assessed for CMM (or follow CMM) don’t have a matured process to produce a quality product in time.

------------- To be continued …----------------------------