Process Improvement Essentials: CMMI, Six SIGMA, and ISO 9001

In Part 2 of the book, I'll look at three of the IT industry's leading quality management and process improvement standards. These are as follows:

ISO 9001:2000

The generic quality standard from the International Organization for Standardization in Switzerland.

The Capability Maturity Model Integration

The technology development process improvement framework from the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Six Sigma

The process improvement program based in statistical application and quantitative analysis developed and made popular by companies such as Motorola, Honeywell, and General Electric.

When I am out in the IT communityat trade shows, conventions, or visiting client sitesthese are the three programs I am most often approached about. People want to know which one is the best, which one is right for them. The most common misconception is that there's a clean answer to those kinds of questions. Each of the three look at process improvement in a slightly different way, with a different focus on the issues of design, management, and refinement. I think it is a valuable move for everyone in IT to know at least something about these three standards. And so now I'll look at general summaries of each. These summaries are not intended to provide the most complete detail available. There are other books, dedicated to each, that can do that for you. But here you'll get a good feeling about what each one is about, how they might help you, and what you might be able to use from each to better promote your own internal process improvement initiatives.