US Requirement For Software Dev Certification Raises Questions 228
dcblogs writes "U.S. government contracts often require bidders to have achieved some level of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). CMMI arose some 25 years ago via the backing of the Department of Defense and the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. It operated as a federally funded research and development center until a year ago, when CMMI's product responsibility was shifted to a private, profit-making LLC, the CMMI Institute. The Institute is now owned by Carnegie Mellon. Given that the CMMI Institute is now a self-supporting firm, any requirement that companies be certified by it — and spend the money needed to do so — raises a natural question. 'Why is the government mandating that you support a for-profit company?' said Henry Friedman, the CEO of IR Technologies, a company that develops logistics defense related software and uses CMMI. The value of a certification is subject to debate. To what extent does a CMMI certification determine a successful project outcome? CGI Federal, the lead contractor at Healthcare.gov, is a veritable black belt in software development. In 2012, it achieved the highest possible Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level for development certification, only the 10th company in the U.S. to do so."
Re:So that's what the model is based on (Score:5, Informative)
Proof:
CGI Federal, the lead contractor at Healthcare.gov, is a veritable black belt in software development. In 2012, it achieved the highest possible Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level for development certification, only the 10th company in the U.S. to do so.
CMMI is a scam (Score:5, Informative)
In 2005, my employer at the time decided to go for CMMI level 3 because it was required by a govt customer for their project. Certification achieved. Then in 2007 my employer opted to shoot for the moon and go for CMMI level 5. Again, certification achieved.
Two years later I left the company, because it was clear that CMMI level 5 was going to kill the company. CMMI level 5 introduced a high level of bloat, inefficiency, process overhead, documentation requirements, and (worst of all) process rigidity and attempts yo manage the development process by statistical analysis. Our delivery times more than doubled. The cost of delivering projects more than tripled. And the Holy Grail of reduced defect density? Nary a sign of such improvement. As far as I could tell, there was -zero- impact on code quality.
Our customers started abandoning us, our reputation circled the bowl, and everyone who had any business sense left the place in droves. What was a $100M/yr contract software development house is now down to 1/4 of the staff and revenue it had in 2009, and I fully expect their parent company will close their doors this year.
I firmly believe that CMMI Level 5 killed that company.
Re:So that's what the model is based on (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. The Supreme Court already ruled you can be forced to contract with a private company for many different things. That cat is out of the bag. Expect more of this in the future.
More? Or did you miss that pretty much every state requires you to hold at least liability insurance to get a drivers' license? And that certainly isn't even the only case before ACA.
What? What planet are you living on? There is no insurance requirement to get a drivers license, and no requirement for a drivers license for that matter. Most states will require you to have insurance in order to register your car, but that is not the same thing as having Drivers License or State ID.
Care to retract your fabrication and start over?
Re:So that's what the model is based on (Score:5, Informative)
Been a while since I worked for a company that cared about the CMMI (UPS back in '96 or so) but IIRC a company can not reach the highest level of CMMI. Only project teams can reach it. So just because CGI Federal had a project team with the highest level of CMMI doesn't mean that was the team working on Healthcare.gov.
I also remember in my CMM training that they taught us that the highest level of CMMI (5 I think) should be reserved for things that essentially affect people's lives (medical equipment software, nuclear power plant software, etc...) and trying to reach anything past level 3 introduced inefficiencies in the development cycle that were unwarranted expenses to most software development.
But I agree with your overall point, CMMI certification is a waste of time and money.
Re:So that's what the model is based on (Score:3, Informative)
Not really on topic, but the original form of Obama care allowed people to buy insurance from the government, it's the republicans that required that that be dropped, and that people be required to buy from a for-profit company.