Quality Assurance
Our commitment to stringent quality standards in business processes, services, and customer satisfaction is reflected in our quality assurance process—our strategy, management, and metrics—and in the certifications we have earned. Our strategy and quality-management systems promote continuous quality improvement, while metrics quantify measurable results. To maintain continuous improvements, we have adopted industry models for quality and have earned the following certifications:
ISO 9001:2000. We have achieved multiple-location conformity to the ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management Standards with zero non-conformances. This certification applies to design, development, implementation, re-engineering, migration and maintenance of application software at the software development centers of Noida and Bangalore and extends to the software development services provided at customer locations, in client server, object-oriented, web, embedded software and legacy environment. While we have also adopted the SEI’s process capability maturity models, we retain ISO certification to keep us under discipline of internal and surveillance audits. Rigorous audits—a major strength of ISO standards—have helped us maintain process discipline and sustain continual process improvement efforts.
SEI CMM Level 5. The Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is widely used by commercial software and information systems organizations worldwide for guiding software process improvement programs. We were an early adopter of the model to accelerate our process improvement initiative and one of the world's youngest companies to be assessed at CMM Level 5 in February 2000.
SEI CMMI Level 5. To harmonize the suite of CMM products with the ISO 15504 and converge synergistic domains, SEI developed Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). Version 1.1, which sharpens the focus on engineering practices and measurement, and refines other areas, was released in early 2002. The Dell Services facilities in India were early adopters of CMMI, and were assessed enterprise-wide at maturity level 5 in May 2003.
People CMM Level 5. In the knowledge economy, the ability to recruit, retain, and motivate talent is a key determinant of business success. After establishing a mature system for delivery of software services guided by CMM, we embarked upon an initiative to improve our people practices using the People CMM Version 2 framework. In September 2002 we achieved maturity Level 4, and in December 2004 we reached another milestone in process improvement when KPMG assessed our software development centers at maturity Level 5.
BS 7799. At Dell Services, we practice p rocess-oriented management not only in software projects, but in all support functions as well. We have employed BS 7799-1:2000 international standards for information security management to improve our system management processes and security-related practices. This has helped us establish an information security management system to help ensure business continuity, confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all our information assets including information shared by our clients.
We help our customers achieve results.
Our technical, quality, and people certifications have helped us control the cost, improve the quality, and accelerate the delivery of applications, and as a result, increase and maintain customer satisfaction—the true measure of our process improvement initiative and our performance.