Serpro studies CMM-style certification plan

Brazil's data processing agency Serpro is studying plans to create a local software quality certification program, based on the CMM international standard, Serpro software factory director Antônio Cangiano told BNamericas. Cangiano expects to decide on the viability of the project within six months. The model would be used initially to judge companies that want to sell to the federal government, and facilitate the participation of small enterprises in tenders. Currently federal tenders require bidders to be certified according to the CMM model, created at US university Carnegie-Mellon, which tends to block out small companies because CMM certification is expensive. This problem has led to strong criticism by local firms and three Brazilian software associations Assespro, Abes and Softex. CMM certification costs anywhere from US$150,000 to US$1mn. Certificates range from one to five, with five being the highest. In Brazil, the only company to have achieved a level four certificate is the local unit of US information technology company EDS. About 12 local companies have achieved level two, and three foreign companies have achieved level 3: Xerox, Motorola and IBM. The Brazilian government's goal is to have 150 companies certified in CMM by end-2006. The local certification model idea is good in principle, but "is fundamentally wrong," the operations director for local software company Ci&T Bruno Guiçardi told BNamericas. What the software industry needs most is to make the cost of CMM certification cheaper by stimulating more companies to certify themselves, he said, adding that there is only one company which certifies for CMM in Brazil, and more companies are needed. "India is not a richer company than Brazil, but the cost of CMM certification is much lower. Why? Because they have ten or twenty certification companies," Guiçardi said.