The Journey from CMMI to Automotive SPICE®

Thursday 03/11/21 from 11:15 pm - 11:45 pm Rapid change and the need for constant enhancement of productivity and innovation characterize today's markets. Organizations need concrete product development processes to protect their major projects' development cycles and continuity in this ever-changing environment. Multinational product development is necessary to ensure the high-capacity requirements of optimized cost structures, which increases the need for cross-industry processes that pass on best practices and provide a uniform development language among the various international development locations. Well-defined and living processes are part of a software organization's DNA and are a company's prerequisite to meet the high demands of process orientation for its software development. Organizations must stay flexible when introducing and pursuing industry-specific process models. The Automotive SPICE® process model represents the process landscape for the continuously developing and innovative automotive industry. Automotive SPICE® processes based on the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) model form an effective process model for the entire development cycle. Using the example of Software Competitiveness International S.A. (SoftCom-Int), this presentation shows how a company with a CMMI-based process landscape introduced the Automotive SPICE® process model and achieved its goal - process maturity at Capability Level 3. The speakers explain why this success is due to the close relationship between the two models, its employees' high process orientation, and the process management tool Stages (incl. the Generic Process Framework). As a best practice, they describe important stages of the one-year roadmap, results of gap analyses and improvement projects, the constructive cooperation among project participants, and the final assessment execution. Picture right side Dr. Zoi Ekaterinidi - CEO (Software Competitiveness International S.A.)

Dr. Zoi Ekaterinidi graduated at the German School Athens – GR and graduated as a DAAD scholarship holder at the Technical University of Munich in Electrical Engineering (Dipl. Ing.). She studied Physics at the University of Athens and obtained her PhD in Information Technology and Space Physics at the University of Athens, in cooperation with Imperial College London (UK). She completed her MBA in collaboration with DUKE University - USA. Zoi Ekaterinidi worked for Siemens in Germany and Greece for 19 years, initially as a telecommunications software developer. Later she managed the Siemens Software Center in Athens up to C-level and expanded it within six years to an international Software Center from 15 to 800 software engineers (Best Practice of Siemens international - top+ award). In 2010, Zoi Ekaterinidi founded her first company, Software Competitiveness International SA, in Athens (www.softcom-int.com). In 2019, she founded the Software Competitiveness International GmbH (www.softcom-int.de) in Darmstadt, which she also manages herself. She works almost exclusively for the German market, for the process- and quality-oriented markets (mainly automotive and aerospace, telecommunications, digitalization), and complex large-scale multinational projects. For her achievements, Zoi Ekaterinidi received the following awards: "Manager of the year 2003" of the ECO-Q Organization for business excellence in Greece, "Manager of the year 2004" of the Greek Information & Telecommunications Forum, "Top + award for Global Competitiveness for Software Offshoring" of Siemens AG 2004, "Siemens AG Innovator of the year 2007". Picture left side Martin Kemeter - Senior Consultant (Method Park) Martin Kemeter works as a senior consultant for processes & standards at Method Park. He consults and supports particularly customers from the automotive industry on process improvement projects. For them, he performs assessments and gap analyses according to Automotive SPICE®. Additionally, he is interested in variant management and requirements engineering. Martin Kemeter is Volkswagen Certified Software Quality Improvement Leader (SQIL), intacs™ Competent Assessor (Automotive SPICE®), Certified Scrum Master, iSAQB® Certified Professional for Software Architect – Foundation Level, and SAP Certified Solution Business Associate with SAP ERP 6.0.