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Rukmini Priyadarshini

When more and more companies are clambering onto the path leading to CMMI Level 5, here's one that wants to go beyond the mere certification.

AT a time when there are ever more companies clambering onto the path leading to CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) Level 5 nirvana, there is one Indian company set to go beyond the mere certification. vMoksha, the Bangalore-based applications service provider, is trying to create a framework that would help companies evaluate their processes on parameters not yet included in the CMMI guidelines. In its own words, "We are creating a highway to becoming a process driven organisation by redefining the entire organisational structure on the basis of business processes and our own Business-CMMI (B-CMMI)."

In June, Pawan Kumar, vMoksha's CEO, plans to present it to the Carnegie Mellon University for acceptance as a business framework that will provide organisation-wide benefits and cover areas not included in CMMI processes so far — such as corporate governance, asset management, reputation management, processes from order to cash, from procurement to payment and planning to order. Kumar has so far identified a total of 57 processes. He hopes that a little more work would enable him to fine-tune the process framework so that there is a more intuitive and logical way to run organisations.

Kumar spoke to eWorld on the how and why of B-CMMI. If the CMMI is a superset of all quality models — process standards, quality standards, maturity or capability models, appraisal methods and guidelines — the B-CMMI "allows the definition of business processes with the same rigour and discipline while enlarging the scope to deliver organisation-wide benefits," says Kumar.

For instance, CMMI does not have in its ambit, market planning, prospecting, opportunity qualification, opportunity tracking, proposal preparation and business assurance. CMMI is more focussed on project management, support, process management and engineering. "Yet, why should businesses and all their processes not benefit from the underlying principles of the CMMI?" asks Pawan.

The 25 process outlined in the CMMI will not cover all business functions and most organisations implementing the CMMI — at various levels — will discover that organisation-wide benefits do not necessarily accrue to them. Even a Level 5 organisation may have rather shoddy processes in some other function, says Kumar. Every effort at CMMI will involve creating process assets and data interfaces. How much more convenient to bring the objectivity and self-control of the CMMI process to all the business' processes.

CMMI has guidelines for a supplier management procedure but none for procurement and payment. Surely, all the three sub-processes can benefit from a process framework. Thus, Pawan has identified a number of processes in organisations that can benefit from a framework and that the organisation can benefit from — these include processes that range from `order' to `cash' from resource requisition to on boarding; and from deployment to separation, the last including deployment, training procedure, appraisal, career development, compensation and separation. The CMMI process addresses only one of these matters. B-CMMI takes on the task of structuring the rest.

Other processes addressed by B-CMMI include enterprise performance, managing stakeholders, corporate governance, says Kumar. "Thus, we can get a set of stable processes covering all activities within the organisation and eliminate non-value-adding activities from the various processes," says Kumar.

In a process-driven organisation, the reporting and responsibilities would be aligned with processes, he says. For payroll as a process, people from HR, Admin and Finance functions could report to a process head responsible for the process. This means that most of the internal wrangling and blaming will be eliminated since the process is assigned importance, according to him. Indeed, with the emphasis on cross-functional teamwork, the organisation will have people more responsive to the needs of internal as well as external customers.

The organisation itself will become a portfolio of processes, with the process leaders reporting to group process leaders who in turn report to the chief process leader — responsible for enterprise effectiveness.

A longer road in practice than in concept, admits Pawan. "Yet, a road worth the travel."

priya@thehindu.co.in

Picture by K. Bhagya Prakash

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