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