"In the future, the software process improvement manager should disappear in the enterprise!" Ieee fellow, Secretary-General of System and Software Process Improvement Branch of China Software Industry Association, said after the kick-off meeting of software process improvement talent project, "Software process improvement should go deep into everyone in the enterprise, not just software developers. The highest realm of software process management is to form habits, which is also emphasized by Mr. Shen Jianfei, the expert chairman of the association, on various occasions! "
On June 5438+1October 65438+May, 2008, the "China Software Process Improvement Talent Project Seminar and Kick-off Meeting" hosted by China Software Industry Association and undertaken by System and Software Process Improvement Branch of China Software Industry Association was held in Beijing. Relevant leaders from Ministry of Information Industry, Ministry of Science and Technology, National Information Standardization Committee, China Institute of Electronic Technology Standardization, China International Investment Promotion Committee and China Software Industry Association attended the kick-off meeting of talent project.
At the meeting, Professor Ju Dehua, a senior consultant of the working group on process improvement knowledge system and employee occupation identification, clearly pointed out: "According to international experience data, the staffing of SPEG is about 1 ~ 3% of that of software developers. According to the requirements of China's industrial scale development and the special requirements of developing many high-mature enterprises in the "Thousands of Projects", it is estimated that the demand for process professionals will be 25,000 ~ 75,000 during the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" period, and the popularization of process knowledge will be limited.
What is software process improvement?
Software process improvement refers to helping software enterprises plan, formulate and implement changes in their software production processes. Just like the production of other products on weekdays, the production process of software has to go through strict "production planning", "production process management" and final "acceptance" of products. Only through a series of strict "production management processes" can the developed software better meet the needs of users. Different from other products, software is intangible, and its value can only be reflected through continuous practice, and the so-called software process improvement is also a product.
In recent years, domestic software enterprises have gradually realized that in order to improve the efficiency of software R&D and the quality of software products, we should pay more attention to the software production process besides finding reasonable software R&D tools and using reasonable technologies. Therefore, with the gradual expansion of the software industry, the software process improvement in China has been deepened in recent years. However, any software R&D process and tools used in software R&D will ultimately depend on people. Therefore, the talent problem in the field of software process improvement has gradually surfaced with the gradual expansion of the industry scale.
Last August, the National Federation of Software and Service Companies of India released a report saying that China has the potential to develop into a big country in software service industry, but it is impossible to shake India's leading position in this industry in the next three to five years. Association President Kieran? Kannik also said that the main reason for the "gap" between Chinese and Indian software lies in the overall ability and level of domestic software talents, including the low English penetration rate in China, the influence of corporate culture on talents, transparency and intellectual property protection. Software talents have become one of the key factors that restrict China from catching up with Indian.
On June 5438+1October 65438+May, at the kick-off meeting of software process improvement talent project, Professor Ju Dehua also clearly pointed out that the shortage of software talents has become a world trend and an indisputable fact, which has also brought opportunities for China to develop IT outsourcing service industry, but the key is whether we have made enough preparations, especially the required talent resources; Judging from the current situation of talents in China, there are also many problems that must be overcome seriously, including insufficient quantity and quality of software talents, obviously unreasonable talent structure, especially the lack of backbones for middle and senior talents and the shortage of many jobs, which are difficult to match. The same is true of process talents, who lack the front-line leadership of process management and improvement.
According to the 11th Five-Year Plan of the software industry, it is estimated that the number of software personnel will reach 2.5 million in 20 10. "From the current situation of software talents in China, there is a serious shortage of software talents in China, and the shortage of middle and senior talents has become a bottleneck restricting our development." Professor Ju said, "Quality first is the key to measure the success of IT outsourcing industry, but if China wants to catch up, it must grasp the root of the problem, attach importance to human factors and shift its attention from process maturity to personnel maturity. Recently, the "Thousand Hundred and Ten Projects" put forward by the state clearly defined the grand goal of building more high-maturity enterprises. Talent, as the first resource, is an important basis for implementing this task. The goal of the process improvement talent project is to cultivate high-quality and mature process talents, design and build a scientific training system, and provide a steady stream of process talent resources for the development of mature software industry and highly competitive IT outsourcing service industry. "
This project started at the right time.
In mid-2002, the top software company that passed the evaluation of CMM 13 as early as 200 1 won an e-government project in a city.
According to the prediction in advance, after the coding of the government office subsystem has started for some time, at a regular meeting, the relevant personnel of the Environmental Protection Bureau found that the vehicle maintenance and management function emphasized at that time was not provided by the government office system at all; In the accidental communication with the leaders of the information center, the project team members found that the form of "government affairs disclosure" module in the public information portal subsystem completely deviated from the needs of customers, and so on. A series of deviations make the project team members have to look back at which stage the problem occurred: although the overall design scheme of e-government has been recognized by users, the requirement audit of subsystems has been completely ignored.
As a result, the project delivery time has been delayed again and again, and the project problems have become more and more serious. Before the project is delivered, Topp Software Company often receives complaints from users.
Later, after a stage of research, the project team summarized the problems existing in the project implementation process, and found that the process improvement manager, as the entity of the project implementation and the overall process control of the project, lacked sufficient experience, had defects in the preliminary research of the project, and had serious communication problems among team members ..., and the gradual accumulation of these problems eventually led to problems such as project delay, more and more bugs, and inability to meet customer needs. ...
We know that the case similar to the above is just one of many cases in the process of enterprise informatization construction, and it also reflects the software talents. Especially with the popularization of enterprise informatization, the software process improvement talents are playing an increasingly important role in the project. Zhang Ruimin, president of Haier, once said, "All our quality problems are human problems. Poor equipment is not good for people, and unqualified parts are not qualified for people. All the problems we can't develop are problems of thinking, not lack of people, not lack of ideas. "
Three years ago, as the secretary-general of System and Process Improvement Branch of China Software Industry Association, ieee fellow was asked: "Are people engaged in software process improvement as promising as us?" This question made ieee fellow and the experts of the Association have some ideas about the start of the software process improvement talent project.
Subsequently, due to the continuous development of domestic software industry and the deepening of software process improvement, the number of corporate members and expert members of the System and Software Process Improvement Branch of China Software Industry Association increased sharply. "More and more enterprise human resources managers turn to us for help and ask how to consider the application conditions of software process improvement talents. At the same time, it is difficult to use CMMI or ISO2000 because of the lack of unified talent evaluation standards in the whole software process improvement field. Generally, a series of evaluation criteria are used to evaluate software process improvement talents, so more and more enterprise human resources managers let us recommend relevant talents. " In the interview, ieee fellow talked about his personal experience in recent years. With the accumulation and expansion of the demand for talents in the industry, experts represented by the association began to start the software process more and more clearly to enhance the talent project.
"In the past, enterprises paid attention to product quality, so they paid great attention to the technology and tools of software research and development. With the continuous expansion of the software industry, more and more enterprises turn their attention to the process. In recent years, many enterprises have realized that whether they use tools or implement processes, they will eventually fall on people. Therefore, the talent problem in the field of software process improvement has been valued by more and more enterprises. " Ieee fellow defines enterprise demand as the second level of software talent engineering.
The real motivation of software process to improve talent engineering comes down to the support of industrial policy. In an interview, ieee fellow said that it has been eight years since the release of the State Council 18 document, and the country has adopted a strong encouragement policy at the initial stage of promoting the development of software process improvement industry. Now, as an organizational unit in the industry, the System Improvement Branch begins to think about whether there is an innovative model to promote the development of the software process improvement industry, and the software process improvement talent project may be a new starting point for this innovative model.
It is based on the career planning of personnel in the field of software process improvement, the desire of enterprise talent demand and the promotion of industrial environment that China software process improvement talent project is officially launched. In an interview, ieee fellow revealed that as early as 2007 10, a working group was set up to conduct pre-research on the start of talent project, and the process improvement branch convened relevant experts to conduct many demonstrations, and finally decided to announce the start of this plan in early 2008.
Everything starts with the project.
In the interview, Professor Ju briefly introduced the current international situation in the field of software process. It is understood that in the field of software process, with the promotion of quality requirements, a large number of valuable process improvement models have been put forward, such as CMM/CMMI, ISO 15504(SPICE), Experience Factory, QIP, IDEAL, SixSigma and so on. It can be said that a hundred flowers blossom. "In 2006, CMU/SEI introduced the personal software process (PSP) knowledge system and PSP engineer certification program, which are part of CMMI and the basic skills necessary for high-maturity software professionals; In the field of outsourcing, CMU/ISRI also introduced the e-service capability maturity model eSCM, which extended the service process management from only considering the development process to all processes before and after the contract. IAOP 2006, the famous international outsourcing professional federation IAOP timely launched the outsourcing professional knowledge system OPBOK and outsourcing professional certificate COP based on service outsourcing. "
At the same time, Professor Ju also said that distributed development across time zones, borders and cultures has also brought new challenges to software engineering management, and some new hot research topics have emerged one after another, such as global software development (GSD), global software engineering (GSE), global project management (GPM) and benchmark data collection and tracking in offshore outsourcing projects. In the face of all this, how to catch up must be systematically sorted out and have its own.
It is reported that according to the actual development of China's software process improvement industry, at present, the members of the talent engineering expert group led by the System and Software Process Improvement Branch of China Software Industry Association have made strict arrangements for the implementation of talent engineering.
First of all, the project team established the overall goal of the software talent project, that is, the establishment of software process improvement knowledge system, professional certification standards, training institutions identification and other work, so that process improvement personnel have unified knowledge and skills requirements and get unified professional certification in the industry, so that enterprises can get great help in selecting and employing people, and ultimately promote enterprise process improvement and promote the long-term development of the industry.
According to Wu Haogang, head of the talent engineering working group, the project team now divides the actual work into three parts according to the overall goal.
One is about the compilation of training knowledge system, the other is about the professional certification of software process improvement personnel, and the third is about the training of software process improvement personnel, including a series of work such as qualification identification and authorization of training institutions.
Wu Haogang said that the basic organizational framework of the project team has been initially completed. In the field of knowledge training system, more than 20 experts have been absorbed, who are generally from major enterprises and have rich theoretical and practical experience. At the same time, the project team also absorbed the human resources managers of some large enterprises as important members of the project team in order to better serve the human resources of enterprises.
In the knowledge training system, training institutions are also the focus of the project team, and the identification of training institutions is the key link to train talents in the talent project. Therefore, the last working group has made relevant plans for the compilation of knowledge system together with several large domestic training institutions, and will strictly consider relevant training institutions in future work.
"In the preparation of the knowledge system, we divide it into three parts in detail, one is the design of the framework, the other is the content of the system, and the third is the application guide for personnel training and post setting designed for enterprise human resource management from the perspective of enterprise application. Because many enterprises are not clear about the job responsibilities of process improvement personnel now, this item will also become a very important part of our knowledge system preparation." Wu Haogang introduced the details of the work to us again.
It is understood that at present, no country in the world has made a systematic design on personnel training for the overall work of software process improvement. "In fact, in the field of software process improvement, China is a latecomer. Although it started late in this field, such as CMMI, in terms of overall development, China's software process improvement construction is still in the forefront of the world!" Ieee fellow is full of confidence in software talent engineering.
In order to make the training knowledge system more in line with the actual national conditions and reflect its innovation, the expert members of the talent engineering working group read a lot of materials, including the relevant materials of American and Japanese European and American systems, and finally decided to compile the outline according to the principles of system compilation that meets the needs of China and has innovative spirit. In the interview, Wu Haogang revealed the content proportion of the knowledge outline, and said that the innovative content of software process improvement with China characteristics will account for nearly 20% of the total content, and more practical content will be integrated into the overall compilation, making the overall knowledge system more valuable for learning and reference.
In order to start the project as soon as possible, the experts of the working group decided to train the first batch of students before the end of 2008, and will conduct practical investigations on the first batch of students in the actual process to improve the knowledge system.
Wu Haogang also said that if everything starts from the original plan to 20 10, the working group will improve the knowledge system again, and then fine-tune it according to the improvement cycle of the international software process improvement training knowledge system.
At the same time, in order to make the system more perfect, the working group has been working hard recently, hoping that the education of software process improvement can go deep into colleges and universities and bring good news to college students' employment. "We will develop basic courses according to the characteristics of college students, so that they can save the training of learning basic knowledge in their future work, which will also promote the development of software process improvement." Wu Haogang introduced. In order to lower the threshold, relevant experts revealed that the learning expenses of junior students will take into account the actual affordability of college students.
Although the software talent project has just started, and there are few experts who can be called software process improvement in China at this stage, "we believe that in the near future, the development of China's software process improvement industry will surely catch up with Europe and the United States!" Ieee fellow is full of confidence in this, and the process improvement talent project may be the starting point to realize the prediction of Shah, the Ministry of Information Industry in Bangalore, India: "Be careful, the golden age of Indian software industry may not last long, because China people can't catch up."