An Overview of the SPI Activities in Estonia
Ahto Kalja1 and Jaan Oruaas2
1Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn Technical University Akadeemia 21, 12618, Estonia ahto@cs.ioc.ee
2Estonian Information Technology Society Kiriku 6, 10130, Estonia jaan@eits.ee
A fact worth mentioning is that the two largest Estonian software firms are the information technology divisions of the two biggest Estonian banks (Hansabank and Estonian Union Bank). The IT divisions of these two banks employ over 100 programmers. Other software companies are mostly small, comprising 20-50 people. If we want to compare the software development processes at these companies, we should emphasise that the banks have the best available technical facilities. The IT divisions of banks don’t have notable problems with financing. It means that they can purchase the newest computers (Sun Microsystems server Enterprise 10000 (Starfire) in the Union Bank and HP equivalent systems in Hansabank) and the latest versions of such DBMS as Oracle, Sybase etc. It also means that the software development in these divisions can support all the programming novelties such as component technology, three level systems, data warehouse paradigm, Internet-banking etc. Last and not least - the banks employ a lot of Estonian best IT specialists. For example, Tallinn Technical University has lost dozens of very high-educated employees to the banks. Of course the software developing processes at bank divisions have their own problems as well. At one time the technological process seems as endless improving, at other times as a battle with fire and the project management and documentation tasks are not always solved the best way.
A group of companies that work on a good level thanks to the technological support from abroad are the representatives of large Western companies, such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM etc. In this case the one who takes care of the software development technology and the training of people is the mother company.
Another group of companies is of kind that works to develop software for western clients. The work of these companies depends on the quality. It means that to survive and preserve clients they have to maintain the same quality level as western software houses. Regretfully these companies at the same time reduce their expenses, for example, in the way that they produce the software without project documentation!
Yet another group of companies works only for Estonian market. This group includes firms, which produce, for example, financial software for Estonian companies, Estonian language-specific text editors, develop Estonian registers or databases etc. Some of these companies are working very successfully and their projects’ software development processes maturity level is often "repeatable". Sometimes their processes (training processes, configuration management processes etc.) reach even the "defined" maturity level.
Unfortunately there are also many companies whose software development activities take place at the "ad hoc" level. The main reason for their survival is the shortage of qualified IT people and companies in Estonia.
The Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for software process assessment, improvement and capability determination was the first methodology, which was learned and used to improve software processes in Estonia. The people from TTU’s Institute of Informatics and the Abobase Ltd were the first users of this technology in Estonia.
The next model, SPICE, as described below, is the next methodology, which has been introduced to Estonian specialists. Some leading software companies are striving to preparedness for ISO 9000 certificate. One computer manufacturer has it already for two years.
Tallinn Technical University has good contacts with Pori School of Technology and Economics. The delegation (3 people) from TTU visited on December 9-10, 1998 the Software Process Improvement Center (SPIC). Negotiations showed that there is an interest and possibility to organise a similar center in TTU and to start the co-operation in the field.
A centralised activity co-ordinated by governmental organisation is translating IT field ISO standards into Estonian language. Same standards have been accepted on title page methods, but the largely used standards, for example ISO/IEC 12207, Information technology – Software life cycle processes, have been fully translated and versions in Estonian accepted.
By joining the resources of these two projects it became was possible to organise the first special course (seminar) on Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (SPICE) = ISO15504 in Estonia. The lecturer was Risto Nevalainen, from STTF Oy, Helsinki. This event was organised in Tallinn on April 2nd-3rd, 1998. Seven participants registered from Tallinn Technical University, 1 from University of Tartu, and 6 specialists from different companies (Aetec Ltd., Abobase Systems Ltd., etc.).
The seminar included the following topics:
The objectives of the Initiative for Software Process Improvement - Regions Exterieures (INSPIRE) project are focused upon providing access to the experience and knowledge of various software process assessment, improvement and certification methods, currently available in Western Europe, to SME's from the Central and Eastern European regions.
This focusing is caused from rapid political changes in these regions where the economies are now being committed to migrate to become market driven. As a result, companies from all industrial sectors must modernise their operational practises in order to be successful in competing for new tasks.
INSPIRE recognises that information technology, and software, in particular, will be one of the critical factors impacting upon an organisation's ability to modernise. INSPIRE will target those organisations in which the development of software is of key importance to the success of the organisation.
To address this situation INSPIRE will meet the following objectives:
INSPIRE operates in Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
Four companies and mentors for some of them have taken part in the project. The companies were targeted to find out their critical business or development processes and make improvement plans. Two of them were software companies, one was a system integrator with its' own development department and the other a system integrator oriented on services and training. The following processes were improved:
The results of PIE have impact on companies from various sides. The experiment showing that typical business software development and supporting process could be easily investigated and assessed could be considered as technical impact. The fact that the Estonian companies’ software capability level profile reached the ISO15504 level 1 and 2 is even more important.
Measuring the following goals at the end of the project: extensions of business activities with clients, meaningful reduction in the average production time of the software in the project etc. have impact on the companies’ business side.
From the organisational side no large changes were made for the experiments. The companies’ employees did some overtime and participated in a few special courses.
The INSPIRE project had also a cultural impact. It showed in people accepting positively the concepts, technologies and management changes concerning software development and more generally in the company production improvement. Anyway all the software teams, mostly composed from young employees with spirit open to innovations, accepted the challenge and moved along in introducing changes to the old software practices.
Last and not least the impact on skills should be mentioned. During the project members of software teams gained significant and valuable new skills like how to use software project management tools according to established procedures. Many engineers involved in the engineering processes received extra training in the software project management, in using assessment standards etc.