• Introduction
• The Idea of Process Maturity
• It's Not About Technology
• A Holistic Approach
• How the Process Works
• Real World Results
• Strategic Results

At Terrapin Technologies, we are rather passionate about the software development process. We believe in the positive things that efficient information systems can do for society, but also realize that far too many information-systems projects are behind schedule, over budget, below the targeted quality, and generally a pain to the managers, executives and customers that are depending on them. Our core mission is to help companies become more proficient in the practice of software development. At a high level, we teach organizations how to develop and manage software and information resources.

The story of Dr. W. Edwards Demming is well known. He was the American industrial engineer who's radical methods were not accepted by US industry, but were so accepted by Japanese industry that they named their highest industrial award after him. In its absolutely simplest form, Demming's message was to focus as much or more on how something is done, rather than on what is done.

For too long, the software development industry has resisted quantitative management techniques. This is the natural result of the fact that ours is a new industry, but at Terrapin Technologies we believe that technology has reached a level where uncontrolled efforts are no longer appropriate.

Therefore, our core message and the one that we want you to take away from reading this page, is that the single most important thing most software development organizations can do to improve their effectiveness it to get the entire team working together as a coherent whole, consistently pulling in same direction, individually empowered to accomplish their collective goals, supported by a development environment infrastructure that minimizes the institutional friction they are forced to overcome, and each believing that their collective strength derives from the way they work together.

We do not rely on the technological silver bullet. We do not believe that by adopting Object Oriented Analysis and Design techniques, the software development problems being faced will go away. Likewise, Structured Analysis, CASE, Bottom Up, Top Down, Booch, etc., etc., etc. have all come (and sometimes gone), but the problems remain the same. We are very wary of those who present technological solutions to what are fundamentally process-related or organizational problems. In our view, that represents an information-science answer to an MBA's problem.

The first step in process maturity consulting is to learn by observation. We do not believe in 'one-size-fits-all' process models, so we do not believe it is possible to talk about how to improve a software development process without first obtaining a thorough understanding of the current environment and the targets, goals and objectives of the organization.

This initial consultation period will typically take one month. During that time, Terrapin will interview all the key players in the development organization. We work hard to make sure that we don't just get the version of events that the managers think is correct either. We dig down into the trenches to get the real story from the front lines.

In addition to the less formal observational components of this process, we have developed a proprietary questionnaire that we use to evaluate an organization's process maturity in several specific areas. This is a critical part of the equation, since most development organizations are essentially 'out of control' when we first encounter them. This questionnaire provides a rough baseline against which future progress can be made.