vMoksha develops a new model -- Business-CMMi

HYDERABAD: Pawan Kumar and Jyoti Sahai of vMoksha Technologies, an IT offshore outsourcing company with development centres in Bangalore, Pune and Singapore have developed a framework of business processes, B-CMMI.

"This model has been derived using the underlying principles of the Capability Maturity Model-Integration (CMMI) and allows the control of business processes, with the same discipline and rigour as is possible in engineering processes," said Pawn Kumar CEO of vMoksha Technologies.

Realising the need to set in place, processes that cover all of an organization’s activities ­ be it project delivery and management or support functions, vMoksha adopted the CMMI as its model for definition and improvement. "Getting organization-wide benefits in operational areas such as marketing, human resource planning, financial decision making or infrastructure management is not possible by implementing CMMI," said Kumar.

The current CMMI model comprising 25 process areas, is well-suited for defining engineering processes only. Hence, this two-year-old, 500-people strong company vMoksha, decided to adapt the CMMI model to define its business processes. "Any other model not compatible with CMMI would give rise to additional process and data interfaces within the organization," explains Kumar who has implemented the B-CMMI at vMoksha in a phased manner.

The B-CMMI implementation plan has a total of 57 processes. Out of which 21 are CMMI processes and 36 are business processes. "Phase I has been completed by June 2003. It involved institutionalizing the complete set of 21 CMMI processes, achieving the CMMI level 5 assessment and institutionalizing the 18 critical business processes that support business development and project delivery," said Kumar.

"Phase II which is currently on at vMoksha will ensure that, by December 2003, the second set of 7 business processes covering all support functions are institutionalized. Phase III, a final set of 11 business processes primarily covering corporate governance processes and processes related to managing stakeholders, other than customer and supplier will be completed by June 2004," informs Kumar.

"As a result of phase I being completed, the company has already seen tangible benefits in terms of increased productivity and reduced business risks," said Kumar,at the SEPG Conference, delineating the benefits obtained in quality and productivity for the organization as a whole. According to Kumar a holistic approach to quality is needed and that is what B-CMMI is all about. He even held out an open invitation to SEI to evaluate their model and its success.

(CNS)