Govt seeks to minimise project risk

By Damaria Senne, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 14 Aug 2007

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is looking to make a Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) rating a requirement to win government tenders, as early as 2008/9.

The move would impact the local ICT industry, which generates a high percentage of its revenue from government business.

ITWeb was unable to gather further information as to how this initiative would be implemented.

However, DTI director Yusuf Timol says this move would bolster the adoption of CMMI to measure the maturity of processes companies employ to fulfil large-scale projects, which would in turn make them globally competitive.

"Government recognises that CMMI is not only beneficial for the private sector, but can assist with improving processes in the public sector as well. Looking ahead, CMMI could become a requirement for government tenders around 2008/9," he says in a media statement.

The DTI says it found on its international trade missions that CMMI had become a global standard and been incorporated into tenders to assist overseas companies in mitigating risk when choosing suppliers.

"When offering a multimillion-dollar tender, companies want to know that the company they award the tender to is capable of completing the project. CMMI provides a benchmark to evaluate suppliers, with most large tenders requiring CMMI level four or five," Timol says.

Managing risk

Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) director Barry Dwolatzky says using a CMMI rating to determine whether a company can deliver is a logical step for minimising risks inherent in large-scale e-government initiatives such as eNatis and Hanis.

"The truth is that the eNatis project, which hit headlines because of problems, is not atypical of software projects. However, most of the software development project disasters are hidden and never spoken about, while companies continue to invest in the hopes of finding successes."

Dwolatzky notes that only 35% of software development projects globally come in on time and on budget. A CMMI rating would help government evaluate the processes a bidder uses and determine whether it has the skilled people, tools and procedures to fulfil the contract on time and on budget.

Companies with a higher CMMI rating have repeatable processes and are better able to gauge the resources required to do a job. A company with a lower rating may have moments of brilliant delivery punctuated by stretches of disastrous non-delivery, he says.

Dwolatzky says SA is already lagging behind in the software development industry, with many of the local software projects being of a niche nature. If project processes are not given the requisite attention, SA will lag so far behind that it will become a perpetual client of software vendors, not a nation that produces software developers ready to compete in the global arena.

"There is nothing more strategic for a company/government than to have control of the software it produces."

Explaining CMMI

Earlier this year, the DTI invested R1.5 million in a CMMI initiative managed by the JCSE. The State IT Agency, First National Bank and IBM are among the companies taking part in the pilot.

The JCSE, in partnership with Dimension Data, will present a symposium focusing on CMMI in September.

The event aims to explain to CEOs how CMMI can assist local companies in improving business processes internally, as well as how it positions companies to bid for off-shore development contracts from Europe and the US.