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Adopting standards and frameworks for regulatory compliance
For many companies, process standards and frameworks are an important part of an overall enterprise risk management strategy. Learn how adopting a controls management framework, such as COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology) or a process standard, such as CMMi, can help your organization align its own processes with commonly accepted IT management best practices. |
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Although the penalties for non-compliance may be explicit, most regulations don't provide companies with clear guidance on the specific steps they must take to achieve compliance, or how they can certify results. As a result, organizations must shoulder the burden of interpreting the impact of legislative mandates on their business policies and processes - and be prepared to support their interpretation to both auditors and regulators.
In response, many companies are creating enterprise risk management frameworks that align their company business policies with generally accepted practices in specific domains. In the area of software development processes, many organizations are turning to the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model Integration® (CMMI®) as a way to improve software processes and implement sound business controls over their software engineering lifecycle.
IBM Rational supports organizations adopting the CMMI by providing:
- The industry-standard process framework
- Tools for reporting project progress
- Integrated software development platform
- The market-leading configuration and change management solution
The CMMI is all about saying what you do, doing what you say, and then measuring it. By adopting the IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP) framework, you can apply the de facto industry standard software development process in an easy-to-follow web interface. You can add process variants or practices to customize the process to your organization, but continue to conform to the standard approach offered by the RUP. Once your process is defined, it can be delivered onto every team member's desktop. This makes the process accessible to all, helping to ensure communication and consistency, and avoid wasting time determining what to do next.
Managing a complex program or project requires a good understanding of the activities that need to be undertaken, their relationship to the business problem and a mechanism to measure project progress against those business milestones. IBM Rational's Team Unifying Platform provides the capability to help your team follow a defined process and then report objective measures against it.
In addition, IBM Rational Portfolio Manager can help you prioritize, track and manage projects at the portfolio level, analyze expected and actual ROI, and monitor organizational progress against milestones.
The engineering process is "where the rubber meets the road." The engineering disciplines of requirements management, analysis, design, implementation, and test are integrated into the process of developing a system or product. IBM's software development platform powered by Rational, the premier platform for teams who build, extend, modernize, integrate, and deploy software in business applications, embedded systems, and software products provides the market-leading system and software development environment. This lifecycle solution is a set of integrated tools which, when implemented with the best practices defined in the RUP, help organizations achieve CMMI compliance.
The "how to" of the CMMI Configuration Management Process Area can be addressed by using Unified Change Management (UCM), Rational's best practices approach to managing change from requirements to release. UCM together with IBM Rational's software configuration management solution tools, IBM Rational ClearCase and IBM Rational ClearQuest, can help you achieve many of the CMMI's configuration management requirements.
One of the biggest challenges of CMMI is making sure the organizational process you define meets the Software Engineering Institute's exacting standards. IBM Rational enables you to achieve this high standard by ensuring the best-in-class process, ease of documentation, and tool automation.
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