Is there a shortage of software process improvement talents? :Software process improvement

In the face of the current situation where the employment cold wave for college graduates in my country continues to cool down, software process improvement talents continue to heat up as the software process improvement work continues to deepen. Typing "software process improvement engineer recruitment" into Google's search bar yields 271,000 results. However, due to the current lack of accurate career positioning for software process improvement engineers internationally, recruitment definitions vary among units. How to control the continuously declining employment rate and the rising demand for software process improvement talents? How to provide a beneficial reference for the job descriptions of software process improvement practitioners? 7 The launch of the software process improvement talent project is imminent.

“In the future, software process improvement managers should disappear in enterprises!” Wang Jun, Secretary General of the System and Software Process Improvement Branch of the China Software Industry Association, said after the launch meeting of the software process improvement talent project, “Software process improvement managers should disappear in enterprises!” Improvement should go deep into everyone in the enterprise, not just software developers. The highest state of software process management is to form habits. This is what Mr. Shen Jianfei, the expert chairman of the association, has always emphasized on various occasions!"

< p>On January 15, 2008, the "China Software Process Improvement Talent Project Seminar and Launch Meeting" hosted by the China Software Industry Association and hosted by the System and Software Process Improvement Branch of the China Software Industry Association was held in Beijing, with representatives from the Ministry of Information Industry, Science and Technology Relevant leaders from the Ministry of Education, National Information Standardization Committee, China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute, China Council for International Investment Promotion and China Software Industry Association attended the kick-off meeting of the talent project.

At the meeting, Professor Gu Dehua, senior consultant of the Process Improvement Knowledge System and Practitioner Professional Identification Working Group, clearly pointed out: "According to international empirical data, the staffing of SPEG is about 1 to 3 times that of software developers. %. According to the development requirements of China's industrial scale and the special requirements of many high-maturity enterprises developed under the 'Thousand Hundreds and Tens' Project, it is estimated that the demand for process professionals during the 11th Five-Year Plan period will be 25,000 to 75,000, while the popularization of process knowledge will It is a larger project, which will be an important contribution and service goal of the talent engineering project. ”

What is software process improvement?

Software process improvement refers to helping software companies improve their performance. Changes to the software production process are planned, developed, and implemented. Just like the production of other products in daily life, the production process of software products also needs to go through strict "production planning", "production process management" and the final "acceptance" of the product, etc. Only after a series of strict "production management" Process" can only the software developed be more in line with the user's requirements. Unlike other products, software is intangible and can only reflect its value through continuous practice. The so-called software process improvement is to A methodology that continuously and reasonably adjusts the overall software production process.

In recent years, domestic software companies have gradually realized that to improve the efficiency of software development and the quality of software products, in addition to finding reasonable software development tools and applying reasonable technologies, they should also pay more attention to the software production process. , Therefore, with the gradual expansion of the scale of the software industry, my country's software process improvement work has also continued to deepen in recent years. However, any software development process and the tools used in software development will ultimately be based on people. Therefore, the talent problem in the field of software process improvement has gradually surfaced with the gradual expansion of the industry scale.

In August last year, the National Federation of Software and Services Companies of India released a report saying that China has the potential to develop into a major country in the software services industry, but it is unlikely to shake India's global leadership in the industry in the next 3 to 5 years. status. Kiran Karnik, chairman of the association, also said that the main reason why there is such a big "gap" between China and India's software is the overall ability and level of domestic software talents, which includes the low penetration rate of English in the country and the lack of corporate culture on talents. Impact, transparency and intellectual property protection and other factors, software talent has become one of the key factors restricting China from catching up with India.

On January 15, at the launch meeting of the Software Process Improvement Talent Project, Professor Gu Dehua also clearly pointed out that the shortage of software talents has become a major trend and an indisputable fact in the world, which has also provided a good foundation for China’s development. The IT outsourcing service industry has brought opportunities, but the key is whether we are adequately prepared, especially the required talent resources. Looking at the current situation of Chinese talent, there are also many problems that must be seriously overcome. This includes software talent regardless of quantity. The talent structure is obviously unreasonable, especially the middle and high-end talents as the backbone, and there are many positions that are in short supply and difficult to support. The same is true in terms of process talents. There is a lack of first-line leaders in process management and improvement, etc.

According to the 11th Five-Year Plan goal of the software industry, it is estimated that the number of software personnel will reach 2.5 million in 2010. "According to the current status of my country's software talents, there is obviously a serious gap in China's software talents, both in terms of numbers and "Quality first" is the key to measuring the success of the IT outsourcing industry, but if China wants to catch up, it must grasp the root of the problem and pay attention to it. The human factor has shifted attention from process maturity to personnel maturity. The "Thousands and Hundreds Project" recently proposed by the country has clarified the ambitious goal of building more high-maturity enterprises. Talents are the first resource to implement this. The goal of the process improvement talent project is to cultivate high-quality and highly mature process talents, design and build a scientific training system, and provide a steady stream of resources for the development of mature software industry and highly competitive IT outsourcing service industry. Process human resources. ”

The project started at the right time

In mid-2002, Top Software Company, which had passed the CMM13 assessment as early as 2001, won the e-government project of a certain city. .

According to prior predictions, after the coding of the government office subsystem had started for a period of time, at a regular meeting, relevant personnel from the Environmental Protection Bureau discovered that the vehicle maintenance management functions emphasized at that time were not provided by the government office system at all; project During an accidental exchange with the leader of the information center, the team members discovered that the "Government Affairs Disclosure" module in the public information portal subsystem completely deviated from the customer's needs. A series of deviations such as this made the project team members have to look back and see where it was. A problem occurred at the first stage: Although the overall e-government design plan passed the review and was recognized by users, the subsystem requirements review was completely ignored.

Subsequently, the project delivery time was delayed again and again, and the project problems became more serious. Until after the project was delivered, Tuopu Software Company often received calls from the user to complain.

Afterwards, after a phase of research, the project team summarized the problems that occurred during the project implementation and found that, as the entity of project implementation, they are also the process improvement managers who control the overall project process. Lack of sufficient experience, flaws in early project research, and serious communication problems among team members... The gradual accumulation of this series of problems eventually led to project delays, more and more bugs, and the inability to meet customer needs...

We know that cases like the above are just one of many cases in the process of enterprise informatization construction, and they also reflect the software talents, especially with the popularization of enterprise informatization, software process improvement talents in the project plays an increasingly important role. Haier President Zhang Ruimin once said: "All our quality problems are people's problems. Poor equipment is due to poor people, and unqualified parts are due to unqualified people. All the problems that prevent us from developing are problems of thinking, not The lack of people means the lack of ideas."

Three years ago, as the secretary-general of the System and Process Improvement Branch of the China Software Industry Association, Wang Jun was asked: "Like us, we are engaged in software process improvement. Do the personnel have a future?" This question gave Wang Jun and experts within the association some ideas for the launch of the software process improvement talent project.

Subsequently, due to the continuous development of the 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 the China Software Industry Association increased sharply. "There are more and more Corporate human resources managers have asked us for help, asking how to consider the application conditions for software process improvement talents. At the same time, due to the lack of a unified talent evaluation standard in the entire software process improvement field, it is difficult to use CMMI or ISO2000, etc.

A series of evaluation standards are used to generally evaluate software process improvement talents, so more and more corporate human resources managers come to us to recommend relevant talents. "In the interview, Wang Jun recounted his personal experience in recent years. As the demand for industry talents has accumulated and expanded, experts represented by the association have begun to become more and more clear about the idea of ??launching a software process improvement talent project.

“In the past, companies focused on product quality, so they paid great attention to software development technologies and tools. As the scale of the software industry continues to expand, more and more companies are turning their perspective to processes. In recent years, many companies have realized that whether they use tools or implement processes, they will ultimately fall on people. Therefore, more and more companies are paying attention to the talent issue in the field of software process improvement. "Wang Jun defined enterprise needs as the second level for starting software talent engineering.

The real driving force for software process improvement talent engineering also comes from the support of industrial policies. In the interview, Wang Jun said that from It has been eight years since the State Council's Document No. 18 was released. The country has vigorously advocated the support of software process improvement for eight years. In the early stages of the country's promotion of the development of the software process improvement industry, strong encouragement policies were adopted. Now, as an organizational unit in the industry, The System Improvement Branch began to think about whether there can be an innovative model to promote the development of the software process improvement industry. The software process improvement talent project may be a new starting point for this innovative model.

It is precisely with software process improvement. The career planning of personnel in the field, the desire of corporate talent needs and the promotion of the industrial environment, China's software process improvement talent project was officially launched. During the interview, Wang Jun revealed that in fact, the talent project was launched as early as October 2007 A working group was formed to carry out pre-study in January, and the Process Improvement Branch convened relevant experts to conduct multiple demonstrations before finally deciding to announce the launch of the plan at the beginning of 2008.

Everything starts from the project

During the interview, Professor Ju gave a brief introduction to the overall situation in the international software process field. It is understood that currently, in the field of software process, with the promotion of quality requirements. , a large number of valuable process improvement models have been proposed, such as CMM/CMMI, ISO15504 (SPICE), Experience Factory, QIP, IDEAL, SixSigma, etc. It can be said that a hundred flowers are blooming. "CMU/SEI launched the Personal Software Process (PSP) in 2006. The knowledge system and PSP engineer certification program are an integral part of CMMI and a necessary basic skill for high-maturity software professionals; in the outsourcing field, CMU/ISRI has launched the electronic service capability maturity model eSCM, which transforms service process management from just Considering the development process and extending it to all processes before and after the contract is submitted, the well-known International Association of Outsourcing Professionals IAOP promptly launched the outsourcing professional knowledge system OPBOK and the outsourcing professional certificate COP in 2006 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, such as global software Development (GSD), Global Software Engineering (GSE), Global Project Management (GPM), and benchmark data collection and tracking in offshore outsourcing projects. Faced with all of these, how do we catch up? We must organize it systematically and have our own Clear understanding and ideas.

It is reported that according to the actual development of China’s software process improvement industry, currently, members of the talent engineering expert group led by the China Software Industry Association’s System and Software Process Improvement Branch have begun to focus on talent engineering. The implementation work has been carefully deployed.

First of all, the project team established the overall goal of the software talent project, that is, establishing a software process improvement knowledge system, professional certification standards, training institution accreditation, etc., to enable process improvement. Personnel have unified knowledge and skill requirements and obtain unified professional certification in the industry, which greatly helps enterprises in selecting and employing people, ultimately promoting the company's process improvement work and driving the long-term development of the industry.

According to Wu Haogang, leader of the talent engineering working group, now, the project team has divided the actual work into three major tasks based on the overall goal.

The first is about the compilation of the training knowledge system, the second is about the professional certification of software process improvement personnel, and the third is about the training of software process improvement talents, including the qualification and authorization of training institutions. Waiting for a series of tasks.

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 relevant experts have been absorbed. These experts generally come from major enterprises and have rich theoretical and practical experience. At the same time, in order to better serve the enterprise's human resources, the project team has also attracted Human resources managers in some large companies serve as important members of the project team.

In the knowledge training system, training institutions are also the focus of the project team. The identification of training institutions is a key link in the talent project to ultimately cultivate talents. Therefore, the previous team has joined hands with several major domestic training institutions. The institution has made relevant plans for the compilation of the knowledge system and will strictly consider relevant training units in future work.

“In the preparation of the knowledge system, we divided it into three parts in detail. The first is the design of the framework, the second is the system content, and the third is the human resources for the enterprise from the perspective of enterprise application. The application guide for personnel training and job setting designed by the management, because many companies are not clear about the job responsibilities of process improvement personnel, so this will also become a very important part of the compilation of our knowledge system," Wu Haogang will work. The detailed situation is introduced to us again.

It is understood that no country in the world has yet designed a system for talent cultivation for the overall work of software process improvement. “In fact, in the field of software process improvement, China is a latecomer, although in this field For example, aspects such as CMMI started relatively late, but based on the overall development situation, China's software process improvement construction is still at the forefront internationally!" Wang Jun 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, expert members of the Talent Engineering Working Group reviewed a large amount of materials, including studying relevant materials from the United States, Japan and other European and American systems, and finally determined The outline is compiled in line with the principles of systematic preparation that meets China's needs and has an innovative spirit. During the interview, Wu Haogang revealed the content composition ratio of the knowledge outline, and said that software process improvement and innovation content with Chinese characteristics will account for nearly 20% of the overall content, and more practical content will be incorporated into the overall writing to make the overall knowledge system more comprehensive. Learning and reference value.

In order to get the project started as soon as possible, the experts of the working group decided to train the first batch of trainees before the end of 2008 and conduct practical inspections of the first batch of trainees during the actual process to improve the knowledge system. to repair.

Wu Haogang also said that if everything goes according to the original plan until 2010, the working group will improve the knowledge system again, and then make small breaks based on the international overall software process improvement training knowledge system improvement cycle. Adjustment.

At the same time, in order to make the system more perfect, the working group is also actively working hard recently, hoping that software process improvement education can penetrate into colleges and universities, hoping to bring good news to the employment issues of college students. "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. This will also play a certain role in promoting the development of the field of software process improvement." Wu Haogang introduced. In order to lower the threshold, relevant experts revealed that the learning fees for junior students will take into account the actual affordability of college students.

Although the software talent project has just been launched, and there are still few experts who can be called software process improvement experts in my country at this stage, "we believe that in the near future, the development of my country's software process improvement industry will definitely be able to Quickly catch up with Europe and the United States!" Wang Jun is full of confidence in this, and the process improvement talent project may become the starting point to realize the prediction of Shah, secretary of the information industry in Bangalore, India: "Be careful, the golden age of the Indian software industry may not last long. Because the Chinese can’t come.”