A basis for process improvement in application management

While the challenges to the software industry in the 1980s were highly focused on the processes for software development, the challenges for the 1990s and beyond are broader, encompassing all the services associated with the IT needs of the customer. Origin expects the contribution to turnover from Applications Management to be far greater in the coming years than that from 'traditional' software development projects. The Application Management service not only involves different processes, but also requires a more customer-oriented, service-based attitude on the part of the service supplier. However, the basic need to be able to assess the capability of an organization and improve its processes is the same. Anticipating this need, the University of Durham has for some years taken part in the Application Management Environments and Support (AMES) project, supported by the European Community under the ESPRIT programme, project 8156. AMES builds on CMM principles and process modelling for Applications Management. In late 1995 Origin and the University of Durham collaborated in an evaluation of AMES for the Origin situation by carrying out a trial assessment. This paper reports on the results of that trial and sketches our vision for future development. As well as presenting our own experience, we aim to stimulate discussion on the broadening of current developments (such as SPICE) to cover the wider spectrum of IT services.