Retailer works with offshore outsourcers to improve
reliability of code
Marks & Spencer has embarked on an ambitious programme to
ensure its projects are delivered on time, at lower cost, and with
fewer coding errors.
The retailer is working with its offshore suppliers to improve
its software quality management and testing processes.
It is one of the first UK businesses to introduce Testing
Maturity Model (TMM), developed to help IT departments identify and
plug gaps in their software quality and testing processes.
Early results show that Marks & Spencer has been able to cut
debugging time on typical large projects by 12 days, save a further
five days' development time by managing bugs proactively rather
than reactively, and eliminate 65 days of effort by removing
duplicate testing processes.
Marks &Spencer, which conducts more than 200 development
projects a year, expects dramatic improvements in software delivery
times, to reduce development costs and to free resources for more
strategic IT projects.
"We are bringing in more projects to time and to budget. That's
where the business really gets the benefit," said Andrew Goslin,
manager for testing methods and standards. "We have far more
predictable projects. The quality of the deliverables is higher.
There are fewer errors and projects are less likely to
overrun."
Analyst group Forrester said that Marks & Spencer had gone
further than most companies in systematically improving the quality
of its software testing.
"This work is more rigorous than we see most companies doing.
But they will benefit from that investment," said analyst Carey
Schwaber.
"The cost of fixing a defect after a system is deployed
increases exponentially. Not only do you avoid embarrassment before
the customer, but it is far more difficult to roll the project
back."
The retailer now plans to support development of TMM, which can
be scaled to organisations of any size, as an industry standard for
improving the quality of software testing.
Marks & Spencer began evaluating a range of process
improvement methodolologies last year. It chose TMM because of its
potential to allow benchmarking with other firms, and its
compatibility with Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi),
used as a quality standard by its offshore partners.
The firm, which worked with a specialist consultancy, spent 135
man days of effort assessing the quality and testing processes of
its own IT department and its three offshore Indian outsourcers.
Staff conducted 30 confidential interviews with programmers,
developers and managers.
The assessment highlighted a range of areas for improvement,
including the need for consistency in application test planning,
the need to prioritise testing and fixing work according to risk,
and the need to consistently log the results of software tests.
"One of the first surprises we had was that CMMi level 5
organisations did not necessarily have robust testing processes in
place. Particularly in the area of testing techniques we found
significant weaknesses," said Goslin.
Marks & Spencer and its offshore suppliers have begun
rolling out improvements to the software quality processes, which
it hopes will become part of the "culture" of the organisation.
"It has paid for itself in less than a year, with the quick wins
that we were able to put into place," said Goslin.
The company is backing a non-profit making group, the TMMi
Foundation, launched last week, which aims to develop TMMi into an
internationally accepted benchmark.
It will enable Marks & Spencer to compare its software
quality against competitors, and will provide it with a yardstick
for selecting software suppliers.
"What a business wants is to have an IT department that will
develop to time and to budget. If you plan the project properly and
run the project properly, and use process improvement
methodologies, you start to get predictability.
"You get the ability to estimate the timing of project and the
cost of projects more accurately," said Goslin.
Testing Maturity Model
The Testing Maturity Model (TMM) aims to help firms assess their
software quality processes and identify weak areas. It helps firms
identify improvements that can significantly reduce the number of
bugs in code, and improve the speed and development of IT projects.
The model rates quality processes against five levels. Most firms
rate at level 1 or 2, far below the level 5 optimum. TMM was
developed in 1996 by the Illinois Institute of Technology to
address gaps in the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi),
widely used as a quality standard by outsourcers.
www.tmmifoundation.org
Capability Maturity Model
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi) is an independently
assessed process improvement standard. It helps organisations
integrate traditionally separate functions, set process improvement
goals and priorities. Organisations that have adopted it, claim
improvements in productivity and quality in IT development work.
The technique, developed by Software Engineering Institute at
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is
scalable, and can be used to cover projects or an entire
organization. There are five levels of accreditation.
www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/cmmi.html