Improving Your Bottom Line—Certifiably

Getting certified is a little like eating your veggies. There's a sense that it must be good for your company, but the benefits aren't always evident. A company-wide effort to meet a quality standard like the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) for software development is mostly justified as a way to build business or meet customer requirements; internal return on investment (ROI) is hard to gauge.

The ROI is there, says Wolfgang Strigel, president of the Software Productivity Center Inc. (SPC), but some companies see only added internal costs and a difficult culture change. "The ultimate challenge is changing people's habits and an organization's way of doing things," Strigel says. "We are all, by nature, resistant to change."

SPC uses ROI calculators to demonstrate the value of improved software processes. While CMMI is the most recognized quality certification for software, you can click on the Tool button above to download an Excel version of the calculator that SPC helped Baseline adapt. It will help you generate an ROI estimate for any kind of software-process improvement.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Baseline.