Desperately seeking a market

While the quality of the South African software development industry is acknowledged to be world-class by many overseas visitors to the country, a reliable international market is yet to materialise for locally produced software.

If the product is supposed to be good, why are there no buyers?

This could be for a variety of reasons, but one of the most compelling answers to this question is that there is simply no guarantee.

The lack of a guarantee that software projects will meet customer quality requirements and be delivered on time and within budget is what separates local software producers from competitors in countries like Ireland, India, and even Egypt.

Unlike SA, these countries have adopted a standard that is recognised by the world`s biggest software markets in Europe and the US as a guarantee of quality.

Given the choice of investing in software that is certified as meeting internationally recognised standards and software that is not, most buyers will opt for guaranteed quality. This is especially true of US-based companies strictly accountable to regulations on good governance.

Is it really surprising that SA is still desperately seeking an overseas market for its software products?

Warwick Ashford, portals managing editor

It could be argued that only by adopting and adhering to an international standard of quality, can any country hope to compete for US and European software outsourcing contracts.

As this is clearly the case, surely SA has adopted such a standard in terms of the national objective of moving to a knowledge-based economy?

Well, it appears not. Apart from limited adherence to the ISO 9001 standard, there is really no other international benchmark that SA has embraced.

In that case, is it really surprising that SA is still desperately seeking an overseas market for its software products?

India is one of the most successful producers of software for the outsourcing market. It is probably no coincidence that the country`s software producers are among the most highly rated in terms of the capability maturity model integration (CMMI) standard.

CMMI is defined by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, in the US. CMMI combines several capability maturity models, including the one developed by the SEI in the mid-1980s as a way for the US military to evaluate the capability of software subcontractors.

Today, CMMI provides a way of measuring an organisation`s maturity, as well as providing a methodology to assist in improving processes to ensure progress up the five CMMI rankings.

CMMI is widely accepted in the US and Europe as an important tool for outsourcing software development work. With around 75% of the highest-level CMMI certified software centres located in India, the success of its software industry is hardly surprising.

As the only African partners of the SEI, Egypt`s software engineering competency centre (SECC) and SA`s Johannesburg centre for software engineering (JCSE) are committed to driving CMMI into the local software industries.

While Egypt has several software producers already moving up the CMMI ladder, SA is yet to start training, evaluating, improving and certifying.

It`s still not certain whether CMMI is appropriate for SA. Like most methodologies, CMMI has its critics as well as supporters, but the only way to know for certain is to test it under local conditions.

The JCSE plans to do just that as soon as it has qualified instructors to drive the process forward, but government support for the planned proof of concept project is still unconfirmed.

In contrast, Egypt`s SECC has the full support of government as part of its national initiative to support the development of the software industry by improving the software engineering practices to higher maturity levels and achieving a strong global market presence.

Egypt has proven that CMMI can be implemented successfully and inexpensively from the smallest to the largest of companies, given the right kind of support.

Hopefully, SA will soon follow Egypt, as well as India, Ireland and other software producers competing for a slice of the outsourcing market in getting real about its strategy to compete and win as a national imperative.

It remains to be seen whether CMMI will be the right standard for SA. However, it is clear that SA needs to commit to some guarantee of quality, and CMMI seems like a good place to start.