“It is software process, stupid”: key to the next millennium software quality

The next millennium will be digital and obviously software has a very important role to play in our personal, national and international scenes. One who develops software better, cheaper, and faster will become the leader with enormous economic advantage. The key to success in software development will depend upon the software processes that are used to build them. “Fix the process not the problem” brings out how fixing the processes can solve the problem forever. The importance of software processes needs emphasis. Many national and international organizations have developed models based on processes to improve quality, productivity and cycle time of software development. Software engineering institute´s capability maturity model (CMM) is one such model. CMM helps in assessing the software processes and their capabilities and continuously improve them to higher levels of maturity. Similarly, ISO 9000 and the related ISO 9001 for software quality are based on software processes. The paper will bring out the importance of software processes particularly in the management of quality of software based on national and international initiatives