Mr. Delroy Chevers

Delroy Anthony Chevers is a lecturer in operations management in the Department of Management Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. He is a PhD student at the University of the West Indies. He received his MSc degree in Management Information Systems from the University of the West Indies, and a BBA from the University of Technology, Jamaica. He has over 26 years of industrial experience in maintenance and inventory and project management. His research interests are project management and information systems quality and success. He has a paper accepted in the proceedings of AMCIS. He has taught MIS and operations management courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels in several tertiary institutions.

Abstract

Assessing Software Process Maturity and Discipline in the English-Speaking Caribbean

The information systems (IS) development community has focused extensively on software process improvement (SPI) programs to address the persistence of low-quality software and the perception of a software crisis. It has employed formal assessment instruments such as the capability maturity model (CMM) to gauge IS process competence and provide the impetus for software process improvement initiatives. Research findings have confirmed that an SPI focus is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the production of successful systems. However, most of this research has occurred in the developed world, much less in developing countries, and even less in the Caribbean. The insights gained from SPI research in developed countries may not be applicable to Caribbean countries, and these programs are not affordable in their current arrangement.
The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of the adoption of SPI practices on IS product quality in Jamaican organizations, and to modify the capability maturity model (CMM) instrument to incorporate the essential differences in IS practices in Jamaica and to offer it generally for use in other developing countries.