SPICE-ISO 15504, carried out under the auspices of the International Committee on Software Engineering Standards and falling within the ambit of the International Organization for Standardization, has been developing a framework for bringing together major suppliers and users of various methods of assessment of software. Terry Rout, an authority on Software Process Improvement and Capability (SPICE), developed around the emerging standard for Software Process Assessment ISO/IEC 15504, was in Chennai recently. Rout, also the senior lecturer at the School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University, Australia, spoke to CNS and explained the need for SPICE when there are other models for software process assessment

What is the need for SPICE, given that there are other existing models for software assessment, like SEI Capability Maturity Model Levels and Bootstrap?

Models such as SEI CMMLs, extensively used in the US, and Bootstrap, used in Europe, have different approaches to software process assessment, which are not compatible with each other, even though essentially, they all involve a similar technique. It was because of this that there emerged a need to harmonize and integrate the different approaches into an effective common international standard.

Why is it that a majority of software companies in India opt only for SEI CMML certification?

I am not really sure about this. It might have something to do with the fact that most of the software companies in India are closely associated with the companies in the United States, where it is the SEI CMML certification that has the greatest following.

What was the objective behind the setting up of the SPICE project?

Our objectives were three-fold. One was to produce a set of draft documents, which could be used as an international standard for software process assessment. The second was to evaluate the standard through trials and third, to promote the use of the technique all over the world.

How different is SPICE from the most-used model, SEI CMML?

The SEI CMML methodology has an integrated plug-and-play system in place. It gives the picture of the capability of an organization as a whole based on certain areas at each level. But SPICE has a different approach—it identifies the whole range of processes that goes into a function and evaluates each process, thereby succeeding in giving a profile of the organization taking in a lot more information into account and giving out lot more information at the end level.

What would you say are the strengths of SPICE over CMML?

The very fact that SPICE allows for the evaluation of individual processes such as project management and configuration management in an organization is a big advantage. SPICE’s treatment of acquisition is far better than CMMs. Unfortunately, the fact that SPICE gives different numbers for various processes such as project management and configuration management becomes a handicap in the eyes of some executives.

While CMML is applicable to large organizations and involves an army of people for a longer time increasing the cost, SPICE is inexpensive and much less resource-intensive. It is a handy method to assess the capability of the software for small companies. Variants of CMM have been developed for small companies, but they have not proven very effective for what is small for the US need not be small for other countries. As many as 75% of the software development companies in Australia have fewer than 20 staff.

What, then, about its weaknesses?

Well, SPICE cannot set priorities for improvement in an organization nor will it define the route for improvement for an organization like CMML. But that may as well be because different organizations have different priorities and it becomes difficult to establish priorities for improvement as a common standard.

How widely has been SPICE used around the globe?

Over 2,000 assessments have been done all over the world, with Japan and Australia being the prominent countries. Some companies opt for SPICE for specific assessments and CMML for others. I just hope that multiple approaches and methods are available for assessing the capabilities of software of organizations effectively.

Priya Mathew
Cyber News Service, Chennai