Process improvement when the fog clears, business success counts

Abstract

Simultaneously improving project management, product development and engineering processes is for many companies crucial to surviving in a fast changing environment. However, the integration of these activities often falls back due to methodology wilderness, lack of vision or organizational misalignment. To stay competitive with its systems and software development, Alcatel has put in place an orchestrated improvement program of its processes and the underlying engineering tools environment. We will in this overview present Alcatel's engineering process improvement initiatives over the past years. Results are impressive. For instance, with moving to a $CMM(I)$ maturity level 3, we reduced delays of projects to half. We also pinpoint some challenges, such as the need of appraisal model stability in order to facilitate timeline benchmarking. Summary Successful systems and software development involves profound technological knowledge, teamwork, processes, methods and tools. To improve performance and to reduce complexity, it looks just rational to put all engineers at one place, share the objectives