People Managament, TCS-style

When Bill Curtis, the father of the People Capability Maturity Model
certification model, announced that TCS had become the first company worldwide
to be assessed at PCMM Level 4 (Version 2), it wasn’t so much the award, but
how it came about, that made the best news.

"TCS applied to us for Level 3 certification and we began the exhaustive
review process. As we carried out the usual checks on all eligibility
parameters, we suddenly realized that leave aside Level 3, TCS already had all
Level 4 attributes in place! We looked even closer, but could fin nothing that
would stop the award. A Level 3 applicant was assessed at Level 4," Curtis
recalled.

And the award was also affirmation of Curtis’ prediction of a year ago,
when he had said that "the first PCMM Level 4 company will come from
India". His next prediction–the first Level 5 company will also come from
here.

The PCMM assessment of TCS; Gurgaon and Noida development centers, recognized
by the Software Engineering Institute at Cernegie Mellon University, indicates
that the two centers "adopt measurable people practices y empowering the
workgroups and manage the capability and performance of their workforce
quantitatively". Level 4 practices provide better inputs to the
organization’s management for taking strategic people practices-related
decisions and to proactively manage the capability of the organization, helping
the organization improve project performance and delivery schedules.

"TCS has capitalized on its software certification of CMM Level 5 and
has extended this to implement the same in its workforce practices," Curtis
said. "PCMM is a roadmap for implementing workforce practices that
continuously improve the capability of an organization. It is a step over the
software CMM that takes into consideration the most critical and indispensable
component of the software industry–people," he added.

Calling it "a milestone in our continuous quest for excellence",
TCS’ chief executive officer S Ramadorai said the achievement was in line with
the company’s "commitment to quality processes and methodologies".
"After CMM, this PCMM Level 4 assessment will enable us to offer a superior
value proposition to our customers," he added.

Mr Phiroz Vandrewala , TCS executive vice-president, said: "This is a
proud moment for us at TCS and for the entire Indian IT industry. The assessment
result is a reaffirmation of the richness of TCS’ people and software
development practices."

People-CMM consists of five maturity levels that lay successive foundations
for constant improvement of talent, developing effective teams, and successfully
managing the people assets of the organization. Each maturity level is a
well-defined evolutionary plateau that institutionalizes a level of capability
for developing the talent within the organization.

Bill Curtis is also one of the co-authors of the software CMM. "I had a
deep appreciation of why CMM was very important for software companies, why it
was a unique way to build an organization. And since people make up any tech
company, I wrote a paper on certification of a company based on the people
practices–that was the initial draft of the PCMM model,"

he added.

Rajeev Narayan in New
Delhi