Conclusion

As in the chicken and egg story, it is difficult to determine if the aim for process quality determine the level of training or if the level of training is a contributor to the quality of the software development process. We know however that most of the organisations surveyed are not explicitly quality oriented. Only few of them have implemented quality programs based on approaches like the ISO 9000 standards series or the CMM. Taking the opposite view, it seems clear that companies that give little training to their software development employees have a lower quality of the software development process.

We can therefore say that it is not possible to have a high quality software development process without giving the appropriate level of training to software development employees.

Of course, we know that the quality of the software development process is in most corporation at best a nice to have in some slide show about the IT department. But our data shows that the process quality measured by the M&A index is also linked to the respect of estimated schedules and budgets for software development projects. This is concrete information that sounds pleasantly to the ears of the supporters of software process improvement and should motivate every software development unit to invest in a decent training program. So the next time you will have to discuss training budget and availability, bring with you the two graphs included in this article. It could cost to train, but it also pays! And if you can get enough training, you can always try to build your own "Chicken Run" escape plan.