There are 3 important components in any organization namely People; Procedures and Methods; Tools; Processes hold them together. The Quality of the product is highly influenced by the Quality of the processes used to develop and maintain it.
Annik is at the threshold of continuous improvement where processes are indeed predictable, consistent and repeatable.
Annik's CMMi L3 Certification
Annik has achieved CMMi L3 V1.2 certification which is an International Standard developed by Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburg USA. It has been developed in the field of development and which provides a model for understanding the capability maturity of an organization’s development business processes. The certificate came in effect from Feb 11, 2008.
One of the fundamental advantages of Annik as a preferred vendor for Research support services was low cost. Annik helped clients reduce transaction costs better than competitors elsewhere in the world. In its primitive years, Annik was considered for outsourced services of tasks and a subset of activities in a business process of a Client. Most of the services were at a lower end of value chain.
Once the credentials of Annik were established and more and more Clients started showing faith in the services provided by Annik, the challenge and obvious growth path was to shed the “cheap service provider” brand and move up the value chain. The idea was to transform Annik into a brand that would help Clients improve business performance through cutting edge research applications. Another challenge facing Annik was to maintain a balance between making processes transparent to potential clients and strengthening security and confidentiality processes.
To address these challenges, Annik decided to adapt CMMi quality framework to help establish and improve processes throughout the lifecycle. The model is intended to improve the capability of processes in order to consistently deliver high quality services to Clients. The idea was to balance the recommendations of the model against the business value that the new processes would add.
CMMi is a compilation of “best practices” from successful organizations across the globe. Moreover, it provides a road map for improvement by providing five capability levels with different practices at each level. Every practice describes a set of key activities that one needs to perform along with set of metrics suggested to improve processes.
Case Study
Taking Annik’s Transaction Processing line of business as an example, it was important to move towards process capability to deliver services as per Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
It was imperative to have “best practices” in place for not only service delivery process but also support processes (Product & Process QA, Organizational Training), that are crucial in meeting customer requirements.
In a dynamic environment, a metric-driven, process-centric approach has been implemented to control and improve processes through project monitoring mechanism, which enables us to meet stringent SLA requirements.
With defects being a critical component of SLA and having a bearing on the project cost and schedule, we have implemented process of verification and validation which are being followed by an independent group of people verifying the quality of product.
At the same time, the practices of risk management process provide adequate guidance to plan, mitigate and handle all types of risks in a cost effective manner.
At the same time, the practices of risk management process provide adequate guidance to plan, mitigate and handle all types of risks in a cost effective manner.
With the SLA in place, it was paramount to make realistic project commitments basis previous project results and unique requirements of current project. To address this challenge, we implemented Requirements management process.
Clear baselines have been defined to ensure integrity of project artifacts.
Moreover, the practices of knowledge management through Decision Analysis and Resolution helped Transaction Processing service line develop a culture of learning and innovation through analyzing and objectively evaluating past and future decisions.
With Clients looking beyond Annik’s transaction processing capabilities and showing interest in Annik’s other portfolios as well, it was important for Annik to institutionalize the improvements. Defining and documenting standard set of processes and ensuring accountability via periodic assessments – internal and external to check progress (Product & Process QA, Organization Process Focus and Organization Process definition – CMMi level 2 & 3 process areas respectively) was a way to drive improvements based upon business needs and measurements. This has enabled the integration of management and technical processes into a coherent whole.
Quality @ Annik
Existence of a Quality Management System (QMS), which contains all quality-related processes, policies, procedures, best practices, etc. The QMS is owned by the Process Group and is accessible to all employees of Annik.
Standard processes are defined at an organizational level and are tailored to meet the requirements of specific projects. Processes are depicted through SIPOCs. SIPOCs are typically created at Service Line level or in some cases specifically for a Client.
With Clients showing interest in Annik’s portfolios, it was important for Annik to institutionalize the improvements. We adapted Lean Methodology to maximize customer value while minimizing waste.
A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste.
Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more accurate.
Quality Learning Roadmap
Annik has designed a Quality learning roadmap to strengthen the skills of internal resources to institutionalize 6 sigma methodologies. We equip every employee with Quality tools, Ideation process, Problem Solving Techniques, Lean methodology, DMAIC Methodology.
Annik has achieved CMMi L3 V1.2 certification which is an International Standard developed by Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburg USA. It has been developed in the field of development and which provides a model for understanding the capability maturity of an organization’s development business processes. The certificate came in effect from Feb 11, 2008.
