General Motors is working with a leading standards
organisation to create a structured approach to managing complex IT
services contracts, which could be applied globally.
Work the car manufacturer has undertaken over the past year in
managing its IT suppliers will be be incorporated into the Carnegie
Mellon Software Engineering Institute's CMMI (Capability Maturity
Model Integration) process.
CMMI is a five-stage process designed to improve the quality and
efficiency of software engineering projects, but it does not yet
cover best practice in outsourcing.
Fred Killeen, chief technical officer and director of the
systems development factory at GM, said, "Our key objective is to
drive implementation improvement, production quality and
reliability."
With the support of the Software Engineering Institute, he said
he wanted to create a more generalised model for outsourcing, which
would have broader applications outside GM. "I hope it becomes a
global standard of common IT processes that can be used when
outsourcing IT," he said.
GM's approach is based on the concept of workstreams, which
define common, repeatable and measurable working practices. GM
staff and suppliers, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM and EDS, have
been running it to improve quality, efficiency and the
responsiveness of IT services.
Bernie Mamon, EDS vice-president for global operations, GM
account, said GM's workstream approach was useful when a business
is using several suppliers that require integration.
David Roberts, chief executive of user group The Corporate IT
Forum, welcomed the initiative. "Within the wider developing
offshore market, there are currently no agreed standards for
contracts, models or sets of metrics which can be used to measure
the service received," he said.
Dave Lounsbury, vice-president at industry body The Open Group,
also welcomed the initiative. He said the CMMI model would
complement The Open Group's own initiatives with certification of
people, products and best practices.
GM anticipates releasing a report on the initial model for
public release by the end of the first quarter of 2006.