Software Development Transition in Thailand

Dr. Kanchit Malaivongs
Fellow, Royal Institute of Thailand

Thailand is in a transition period. After five years of economic recession, Thai Government has realized the need to reform its own functions. Starting from October 1, 2002, several new ministries were established to manage urgent issues. One such new ministry is the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology. Coincide with the new ministry is the approval of the new national IT Policies and Plan for 2002 – 2010. These movements demonstrate that Thailand determines not to miss the last ICT train.

Three years ago, the Software Park Thailand initiated a program to improve the software development capability of Thai software houses. The Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model is adopted as a tool for such purpose. Several Thai software experts were trained on the concepts of CMM for Software and on the CMM assessment process. Workshops on CMM have been organized from time to time and are well accepted by software companies. As of October 2002, one CMM lead assessor has been authorized to conduct the assessment and six candidate lead assessor are waiting to be authorized. Two companies have been assessed to the second level and one company to the fourth level.

Reasons for adopting CMM in Thailand are quire obvious. First, CMM consists of a proven set of key practices. Following these key practices will ensure the success of the companies through the satisfaction of the customers. Although Thailand has been using computers since 1960, development of large software is still in its infancy. Most software companies used their own organic style of software development process. Many projects failed because of the poor software development process and lack of good practices. Software Park Thailand believes that if key practices specified in CMM are used, software products will be much improved.

Secondly, CMM is well known as an international standard for software process improvement. Many countries recognize CMM and encourage their software companies to use CMM in improving their software processes. Several CMM courses and experts are available in advanced countries for us to deploy. And, a lot of CMM literature has been published on its different aspects.

Thirdly, the philosophy of CMM is in the continuous process improvement. CMM is not only used to measure how well a company develop the software but it also helps the company to find out the necessary improvements in its software processes. These findings are the result of the CMM assessment.
After Software Park Thailand decided to adopt CMM for promoting software process improvements, several companies expressed their interest to participate in this movement. A SPIN group is founded and a meeting to exchange ideas is organized every month. Various courses related to CMM are organized for Thai software companies. After two years of preparation. companies joining the CMM movement are ready to be assessed while many more companies start to join.

Managers of the companies assessed to CMM Level 2 express their feeling that the assessment is very important. They have just realized that what is even more important is not in the result of the assessment but in the process of improvement itself. Their software staff must develop and organize all the process, rewrite the policies, develop the quality assurance activities, etc. As a result, overall processes become more rigorous and stable. Software staff have been forced to work more efficiently while producing all necessary documents for quality audit. These managers find that CMM is quite helpful in raising their companies to the world class level.

Software Park Thailand also recognize the change in software processes of those companies joining the CMM movement. We believe that we are on the right path towards becoming a sustainable software industrialized country. We are really in the transition period – the time that we can use ICT to the full advantage for the country.