The India end of the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ), a neutral forum of customers and suppliers of IT application software is being inaugurated in Bangalore on June 9.

CISQ is an IT industry leadership group comprised of IT executives from the Global 2000, system integrators, outsourced service providers, and software technology vendors committed to introduce a computable metrics standard for measuring software Quality & Size. The consortium is an open forum in which customers and software developers can develop an industry-wide agenda of actions for improving IT application quality and reduce cost and risk.

Sponsored by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University and the Object Management Group (OMG), CISQ was founded by global experts in software quality standards including: Dr Bill Curtis, director of CISQ and author of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) framework; Dr Paul Nielsen, director and CEO of SEI; and Dr Richard Soley, CEO of OMG.
All three founders were in Bangalore to launch the Indian operation, in cooperation with NASSCOM.
“With more and more Indian origin IT companies making it big on the global scene, it is imperative for them to attain the highest standards of software quality”, said Curtis, at the media announcement on Tuesday, “With CISQ standards, I am confident that Indian IT companies will play a key role in taking the lead when it comes to cost effective delivery of highly dependable software solutions.”

“For several years, IT executives have complained that there are no industry standards for measuring the quality of business application software,” added Soley. “CISQ will enable us to benchmark the effectiveness of internal development, evaluate the quality of applications acquired from external sources and predict the quality and cost of IT services to the business.”

Major global corporations including Tata Consultancy Services, AXA, IBM, General Motors, McKesson, Morgan Stanley and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are among the CISQ members driving the effort to create a global standard for measuring and reporting the quality of IT applications. CISQ will now be present in India through its Executive Forum and help enable Indian IT companies raise their quality standards.
In the context of CISQ, SEI will work with OMG to develop software-related standards and appraiser licensing programs. The standards process is co-managed by the two groups and brings together IT leaders worldwide from both organizations.

According to a Forrester, June 3 2010 report, the global IT market is expected to witness an exponential growth of 9.3% and touch $1,534 billion in 2010. India has about a 20-25% of share in the global IT consulting market alone

Bill Curtis summarises CISQ’s role and agenda:

• The CISQ is an industry-led, SEI & OMG sponsored forum also supported by NASSCOM that will create a standard for measuring the quality and quantity of software product in IT
• We expect the first version of the sizing and quality standards to be available in 2011.
• The OMG, creator of CORBA, UML, and about 30 other standards, is well equipped to generate computable standards for software; once that’s done, the SEI will create an appraiser certification capability much like CMMi
• Major industry players such as GM, AXA, US Department of Homeland Security, IBM, Capgemini, and Tata Consulting Services are driving this forward to ensure the standard can and will be applied in practice
• In the 1990s, the process maturity standards pioneered by SEI helped Indian industry to achieve a strong presence in western IT markets. A certification standard based on CISQ will enable Indian IT service industry to level the playing field and establish its world-class status.
For more information on CISQ, India: www.it-cisq.org