Conference Presentation
Quantified Process Improvement.

Yeo Lee Cheng. Senior Director, NCS Pte. Ltd.

Lee Cheng has been involved in implementing organisation-wide strategic improvement programmes for more than 10 years. These include standardization of IT practices, implementation of an integrated quality management system, and benchmarking against external standards/best practices such as CMMI, ISO9000, Singapore Quality Award, ITIL/BS15000, People Development Award, PRINCE2, etc.

• Making sense of the process models
• Selecting the “right” models for your organization
• An integrated and systematic approach to implementing multiple models
• Making the process models work for you
• Critical success factors and pitfalls to avoid
• Dealing with “model-fatigue” and sustaining the efforts

Francis Mahendran & TheinNaing Ba. Motorola Global Software Center, Singapore

Francis Mahendran is the Process & Quality Lead for Motorola, Global Software Group, and Singapore. Francis has over 15 years experience in the field of Software Engineering. He is a Six Sigma Green belt and a Certified Software Quality Analyst. He has a Masters degree in Software Engineering, from NUS.

Existing CMM level 4&5 organizations will face new challenges as they transition to CMMI level 5. This presentation will attempt to point out potential pitfalls and the areas of focus or consideration for transition

Jyoti Sahai. Executive Vice President, vMoksha Technologies

Jyoti Sahai, Executive Vice President, is heading the Banking, Finance, Securities, and Insurance (BFSI) Business Unit at vMoksha Technologies. He also heads the Process Management and Improvement Group at vMoksha that spearheaded the CMMI Level 5 assessment, and is now evolving the Business-CMMI model.

Prior to vMoksha, in his assignments with Deutsche Software and Birla Horizons, Jyoti had been instrumental in defining and implementing the Quality Management System leading to ISO 9000 -03 certification.

He brings along with him a strong domain expertise in Banking and Finance with core competencies in Trade Finance, Retail Banking, and Credit Appraisal and Monitoring.

Business-CMMI is a framework of business processes derived using the underlying principles of CMMI, that allows definition and control of business processes too with the same discipline and rigor as is possible for engineering processes.

While defining its set of processes, vMoksha found that the 25 process areas comprising the CMMI model primarily dealt with the project delivery and management activities and were well suited for defining engineering processes only. The current CMMI model does not define process areas that would cover the business processes. Thus vMoksha decided to adopt the underlying principles of the CMMI model to define the business processes too.

As far as business processes were concerned, as there were no specific practices defined for these processes in the CMMI model, the definition was done keeping in mind the general CMMI principles. The striking features of the defined business processes that have been derived from CMMI principles are as follows:

• The relevant stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities are clearly defined
• The metrics are required to be collected to measure the performance of the process
• Processes can be statistically controlled to optimize on performance
• Building up of an organization-wide library of best practices, guidelines, and other assets
• Establishment of formal risk management techniques even for business activities.

Over a period of time, existence of a set of stable and capable business processes at vMoksha will ensure that the various functionaries primarily perform only the value added activities within the organisation, the various non-value adding activities being gradually obviated by statistically controlling and continually improving the processes.
Business-CMMI implementation will enable vMoksha to derive real and quantifiable business benefits from the process improvement initiatives.

NG Kong Phui. R&D Validation Department, Gemplus Technologies Asia

Ng Kong Phui currently works as a Validation Leader in Gemplus R&D, in charge of validation of smart card OS for the telecom products, particularly the 2G and 3G Java Cards.

He with more than 9 years of testing experience, of which more than 3 years is on software validation in an R&D context, and more than 6 years in hardware testing, devising test strategies, and designing test solutions for functional testing of computer multi-media peripherals, in the production floor.

In reality, nothing is perfect, and software is never bug free. It has been a ritual that all software will end up with patch releases, correcting bugs, adding implementations that were overlooked previously, etc. To fix these mistakes is resource consuming, and these bugs are also damaging the quality image of the product.

Fortunately there are many test case generation methods in the field of software testing to help in systematically deriving test coverage, and thus to minimize these validation over sight. One such good method is the Decision Table.

This method can helps us to derive all complete possible cases of a requirement, and be able to see any redundancies. In this presentation, we shall explore the use of this method in 3 areas:

On a new software project:
We will see how in a software project, both testers and developers can leverage this in the various phases of the software development life cycle, to bring out the assurance that requirements are correctly implemented, test coverage sufficiently derived and performed with no redundancies and inconsistencies across unitary tests and full validation tests.

On an existing software project:
We will see how this method can be deployed to obtain a gap analysis on a product regarding its actual and required implementations, in order to justify on its cost of improvement.

On fixing a software bug:
How to ensure that it is sufficiently fixed and the corrections are adequately validated.

Pradyumma Pradhan. Gemplus Technologies Asia.

Mr. Pradyumna Pradhan, is working with Gemplus Technologies Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore for more than 7 years as a Unit Manager in the FSS validation and R&D Services team. His main responsibilities are to manage two teams to provide validation solutions and services for banking and telecom projects. He is also responsible for competency enhancement, CMM practices deployment, corporate objective fulfillment and validation process improvement with in his team and across R&D validation team.

Most of the software organization has tracker system to keep track of the bugs found during software validation. During this process of product test/validation there are many supporting deliverables like test cases, test libraries, simulation tool, debug tool, environment setting etc also get many problems discovered in themselves. These problems get skipped and corrected without keeping a track. Also there are cases where developers finds bugs themselves, corrects it and these get skipped tracking.

To track such bugs and create knowledge database to get benefited by whole project group for the future projects, a tracking system can be deployed to improve the process and knowledge competency of the team.

Dr. Pallab Saha. Institute of Systems Science

Dr. Pallab Saha is a member of the faculty with the Institute of Systems Science, National University of Singapore. He has a Ph.D. (Engineering) in Information Systems.

His current research interests include IT Governance, Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management and utility of information technology in implementing business strategies and has published research papers in these areas. Prior to academics, he has held consulting positions in several large IT organizations and worked on projects for Fortune 100 companies.

Over the years, businesses have invested trillions of dollars on Information Technology (IT). Paradoxically, the benefits and value from such investments are still fuzzy and largely intangible. While, IT faces tremendous pressure to deliver tangible and sustained value, prudent businesses and organizations realize and acknowledge the emergence of IT as an essential element for corporate success. Top performing organizations succeed in obtaining value from IT by adopting and implementing effective IT governance practices to support their strategies and business processes. IT governance involves specifying the decision rights, the accountability and authority framework for important IT decisions, with the objective of encouraging ‘desirable behaviors’ in the use of IT.

IT governance is an idea whose time has come, because information is the least understood of the key assets in the enterprise. With the huge growth of IT spending and strong evidence of significant bottom-line improvements due to better IT decisions, it is time to take IT governance and its overall effectiveness seriously. Looking ahead, the impact of IT on enterprise performance will continue to grow. IT governance encompasses several critical decisions and initiatives for the senior management. However, in practice due to lack of formal governance frameworks enterprises struggle in adopting good governance practices and as a result improve its effectiveness. In this presentation, find out more about:

• What is IT governance? How does it influence strategic alignment?
• What does IT governance entail for the senior management? What can they do about it?
• What are the current state of IT governance practices? How do they impact overall organizational performance? How does governance of IT influence corporate governance practices?
• What is the impact of business processes on IT governance practices?
• What challenges do organizations faces in adopting and institutionalizing effective governance practices?

Sushil Chatterjee. Director & Principal Consultant, Edutech Enterprises

As Director & Principal Consultant of Edutech Enterprises, Sushil has been providing consulting and training services in the S. E. Asian region over the last 8 years. His primary areas of engagement are in IT Governance, IT Operations Excellence and Enterprise Architecture. He worked with such client organisations as Bank Negara Malaysia, DRB-Hicom Malaysia, Citibank, Petroleum Corporation of Thailand (PTT), Singapore Airlines, DBS Bank, United Overseas Bank, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Singapore Ministry of Manpower, and Singapore Ministry of Defence.

COBIT, or Control Objectives for Information and related Technology, now in its 3rd edition, is a major initiative of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) which addresses the need for management and control of information and related IT. With the establishment of the IT Governance Institute (ITGI) in 1998, the continued development of COBIT as the de facto IT Governance framework has been assured.

The COBIT framework was developed in response to the need for a framework for the proper governance of IT in its entirety within organizations. Business orientation is the main theme of COBIT. It is designed not only to be employed by users and auditors, but also, and more importantly, by business process owners. Increasingly, business practice involves the full empowerment of business process owners so they have total responsibility for all aspects of the business process. In particular, this includes providing adequate controls. The COBIT Framework provides a tool for the business process owner that facilitates the discharge of this responsibility. The Framework starts from a simple and pragmatic premise:

In order to provide the information that the organization needs to achieve its objectives, IT resources need to be managed by a set of naturally grouped processes.

It continues with a set of 34 high-level Control Objectives, one for each of the IT Processes, grouped into 4 domains: planning & organization, acquisition & implementation, delivery & support, and monitoring. This structure covers all aspects of information and the technology that supports it. By addressing these 34 high-level Control Objectives and with reference to the organization's policies and standards, the business process owner can ensure that an adequate control system is provided for the IT environment.

Ravi Kumar. Chief Quality Officer & AVP, Emerio Corporation

Ravi Kumar, a MBA Graduate from University of Hull, is currently working in Emerio Corporation as a Chief Quality Officer and AVP – Corporate Planning. His principal responsibilities include identifying, planning, achieving and maintaining the quality accreditations for the Emerio group. In this capacity he steered three ISO 9001:2000 certifications for the Emerio group of companies. Currently he is spearheading Emerio’s ITIL, Business Continuity Management (BCM), e-SCM and SEI CMM Certifications. Ravi’s white papers on BPO were published in DMreview and Ebiq.net.

Ravi was awarded twice the Singapore National Excellent Service Award by Spring Singapore in 2003 and 2004 (EXSA Gold Award – 2003 & EXSA Star Award – 2004). He holds membership in PMI and Singapore Productivity Association

• What is Balanced Scorecard
• A tool for translating vision into action
• Benefits

Are Quality Management Certification Beauty Contests

The Panel Discussion is one the sessions of the conference program on 29th March, 2005.

There is some belief that some companies pursue the achievement of QMS standards to Ïlook goodÓ. Considering this belief to be true, the topic seeks to address this concern. An inaccurate assumption of intention can lead to ineffective or even counter-productive reactions.

The captains from the industry shall participate in this discussion.

Moderated By:

Dr. Steve Miller. Practice Professor & Dean, School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University

Steve Millers is Practice Professor and Dean, School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University. Prior to SMU, Steve served as the Chief Architect Executive, Asia Pacific Business Innovation Services, IBM Global Services.

Steve has spent several years at the Carnegie Mellon University first completing his Masters of Science in Statistics, thereafter completing his PHD and then as a Assistant Professor of Manufacturing Management.

Panelists:

Dr. David Chew. Founder & Chairman of Stratech Systems Limited, Singapore

Dr. David Chew Khien Meow is the founder of Stratech Systems Limited. Dr.Chew holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree in Business Administration from Southern California University and has more than 20 years of experience in the IT and advanced technology industries. He is responsible for charting out the Company's strategic direction. Dr. Chew is the driving force behind the Company's business and under his leadership, the Company was recognized as an Enterprise 50 Company in 1999. Dr. Chew has served as a member of the Board of Directors and Audit Committee of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) since its inception

Leonard Nee. Deputy Director, Network and Infrastructure Projects Division, Defence Science and Technology Agency

Leonard runs the Corporate IT Enterprise Architecture program on behalf of MINDEF/SAF. He assists MINDEF and SAF CIOs in formulating the enterprise solution and technical architecture, strategy and directions for Corporate IT.

Leonard is a PSC local merit scholar who obtained his first degree in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Singapore.

Leonard has held a variety of portfolio in the Command and Control Division in DSO including various stints as a Project Leader, Program Manager, Laboratory Head, Head of Corporate Plans and eventually Assistant Director of Plans Division. Leonard transferred to the Directorate of Research and Development as Assistant Director of Technology when the latter was set up in 1997 with the corportisation of DSO. In 1999, Leonard was transferred to SCO as Divisional Manager of Computer Division 2. He assumed the appointment of Deputy Director in 2000.