In Pursuit of Continuous Improvement: The Case of a Software Company

Companies focus on software development in order to survive in a highly competitive world. They not only need to keep up to date with the changes that are occurring in their environment, but they also need to assure the effectiveness of their processes. One way to do that is pursuing high quality standards by continuously improving the development processes. This article describes the decision of a software company specialized in information technology services for banking to pursue the improvement of its software development processes through CMMI ML3 certification and LEAN implementation. Throughout the article is shown the reasons why it was decided to take this enhancement step, the tools used to support the implementation, and the obtained results. The intent is to show that continuous improvement is not an immediate result of a certification or best practices implementation but the decision to make improvement as company's DNA.