Development infrastructure characteristics and process capability

Ravi Patnayakuni, Arun Rai
2002 Communications of the ACM  
A substantial portion of most organizational budgets goes toward developing IT applications. 1 Despite the existence of many tools and methodologies, Information Systems Departments (ISDs) continue to face burgeoning costs and delays. In this article, we explore methods of improving the productivity and effectiveness of the application development process using the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) 2 by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University as a benchmark for
more » ... ss maturity levels. Although most research based on CMM focuses on software development practices, we focus here on the infrastructure supporting the development process. The importance of development infrastructure is receiving increasing attention. 3 For example, reusability practices depend on the establishment of a repository. An integrated and interoperable development infrastructure allows developers to share design-related information. Using data from our nationwide survey of systems development managers, we examine the relationships between the systems development infrastructure, process maturity, and performance, as assessed by customer satisfaction, product quality, and process efficiency. Inside Development Infrastructure We focus on two aspects of development infrastructure in this study: the technology infrastructure, and measurement systems. We analyze these two aspects, along with performance of the systems development process, across levels of process maturity. As
doi:10.1145/505248.506009 fatcat:j6nbmw7oajaj3jdpu2pdqv7dku