As a CMMI Consultant, during CMMI consulting assignment, you may be asked about the benefits of CMMI related to Improvement in Schedule Targets, Post-Release Defect Density and Cost Savings to the End User. CMMI Consultants may answer this question by taking input from the post below:

CMMI FAQ 0

24th January, 2015

A study was conducted by the SEI (now CMMI Institute) on the metrics data collected from 35 large organizations across the world. These organizations having low as well as high maturity apply CMMI Process Improvement practices to their Software Engineering, System Engineering and other Engineering activities.

This study was conducted at TrialStat Corporation, a small software company, situated in Canada. TrialStat develops software for use in the clinical trials phase of the drug development process. TrialStat started its journey of Process Improvement in 2002. TrialStat uses agile methodology to develop application in short time. Process Improvement activities were performed in iterative at the TrialStat. Important Process Areas identified by the organization were – Measurement and Analysis (MA), Process and Product Quality Assurance (PPQA), Organizational Process Focus (OPF), Organizational Process Definition (OPD), and Organizational Training (OT). Initially Maturity Level 2 implementation was started moving to the Maturity Level 3.

Following improvements were observed:

Improvement in Release Cycle

Figure: Ability to Meet Schedule Targets

Due to drug development process, software developed by TrialStat needs to be on strict Timeline and need to be on Schedule. The above figure shows the meeting of the deadlines for 5 major releases of the CA Software. 3 of the 5 deliveries were delivered on time. There were delays of 07 and 03 days in two of the deliveries.

Post-Release Defect Density

As shown in the Figure (Post-Release Defect Density) a series of major and minor releases of CA product. Defects are expressed as per function point and the benchmark is expressed as top red line.

Figure: Post-Release Defect Density

The blue line shows variance in quality in the releases, the defect density per release and is lower than the benchmark set for Defect Density. Peaks in the graph were for the largest deliveries.

Cost Savings to the End User

Figure: Cost Savings to the End User

The monetary benefits are shown in the above figure. Due to lesser number of delays, less down time, improved customer satisfaction, fewer lost clients more cost savings occurred. The quality levels shown by the organization are the same level as ISBSG Benchmark. And it became a reason for customers to continue using company products and giving more business to it.

Source: Performance Results of CMMI®-Based Process Improvement Report.