Developers will be offered guidelines for the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) process.
Microsoft plans two process templates to assist developers using the forthcoming Visual Studio 2005 Teams System (VSTS).
CMMI is to be delivered to developers using the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF), a set of software development processes, principles and practices that will be used to guide developers participating in enterprise-level projects. Microsoft is planning MSF for CMMI Process Improvement, which will link into CMMI to help ALM teams improve their software development processes, and MSF for Agile Software Development, which will be enhanced with the addition of features in areas like risk management and release management.
CMMI was developed by the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute and is being increasingly viewed as the best way for businesses to improve the way they build applications. Software development is notorious for running late and over budget, faults that are blamed on companies having a general lack of internal processes.
CMMI can help overcome this by specifying the steps a development team must take during an application’s build process, which can help ensure the smooth running of their software development processes on an ongoing basis. As such, CMMI has been seized on by outsource service suppliers eager to prove their application development processes are up to scratch.
And, increasingly, ISV incumbents in ALM are meshing CMMI with their own tools. Borland Software, for example, this year acquired TeraQuest Metrics, buying in some of the experts and knowledge whose work assisted CMMI’s development.
VSTS, due later this year, is Microsoft’s first real move into ALM. The company believes VSTS can challenge incumbents, and CMMI will prove to be a crucial element of this new challenge. Microsoft will bring its ALM suite to an audience that is highly skilled in programming but generally lacking in the process-based aspects of ALM. However these process-based elements of ALM are now viewed as vital to helping organizations reduce costs and speed delivery associated with application development.
