It is software process, stupid: next millennium software quality key

The economic impacts of software in our economy are discussed. The current economic state has been attributed to the Information Technology which has not only generated a large number of jobs but also contributed to the productivity and quality of the operations in our digital economy. The next millennium will be digital and obviously software has a very important role to play in our personal, national, and international scenes. Software will be essential in all our products from Space Station and airplanes to automobiles, television, pagers, and cellular telephones, For any organization, for that matter, even nations to succeed in the digital millennium software will be very essential. One who develops software better, cheaper, and faster will become the leader with enormous economic advantage. The key to success in software development will depend upon the software processes used to build them. Many national and international organizations have developed models based on processes to improve quality, productivity and cycle time of software development. Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is one such model. CMM helps in assessing the software processes and their capabilities and continuously improve them to higher levels of maturity. Similarly, ISO 9000 and the related ISO 9001 for software quality are based on software processes. This paper will bring out the importance of software processes particularly in managing the quality of software based on national and international initiatives.