Process improvement in governmental agencies: Toward CMMI certification

Software process improvement (SPI) approaches are highly mature within both product and service development enterprises. Among SPI approaches, particularly within large enterprises, CMMI is widely used and demonstrated its influence in leading the application of performance improvement methods in industry. In this paper, we test the readiness of government agencies by conducting internal CMMI appraisals on two selected government agencies. Using CMMI as a benchmark, we aim to determine how well do these agencies apply sound processes. We chose a sample of two large organizations from Saudi Arabia, a young but fast growing software market. We found that process areas such as requirements development, technical solution, configuration management, and verification follow well-defined processes with some areas of weaknesses. While both agencies have very limited knowledge of process improvement approaches, and they are relatively new software development establishments, yet they demonstrated areas of strength that were not expected. Our results indicate early signs of market maturity. We argue that the market is becoming more mature whereby SPI approaches may need to be enhanced reaching higher levels of maturity.