US Requirement For Software Dev Certification Raises Questions
dcblogs writes "U.S. government contracts often require bidders to have achieved some level of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). CMMI arose some 25 years ago via the backing of the Department of Defense and the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. It operated as a federally funded research and development center until a year ago, when CMMI's product responsibility was shifted to a private, profit-making LLC, the CMMI Institute. The Institute is now owned by Carnegie Mellon. Given that the CMMI Institute is now a self-supporting firm, any requirement that companies be certified by it — and spend the money needed to do so — raises a natural question. 'Why is the government mandating that you support a for-profit company?' said Henry Friedman, the CEO of IR Technologies, a company that develops logistics defense related software and uses CMMI. The value of a certification is subject to debate. To what extent does a CMMI certification determine a successful project outcome? CGI Federal, the lead contractor at Healthcare.gov, is a veritable black belt in software development. In 2012, it achieved the highest possible Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) level for development certification, only the 10th company in the U.S. to do so."
'Why is the government mandating that you support a for-profit company?"
Works for Obamacare.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you're not using code reviews, chances are your code sucks. I don't see any need to pay somebody big bucks to tell you that. Similarly, coding standard violations increase the chance for bugs, and it's worth making code conform.
In my experience, with very good people, we find a lot of bugs in code review. If you're not finding bugs, either you're superhuman or you do need instruction in code review.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes