The Business Value of Application Internal Quality - Web Version

8/14/2019 The Business Value of Application Internal Quality - Web Version

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White Paper

April 2009 A CH IE VE I NS IGH T . D E L I V ER E XCE

The Business Value

of Application Internal Quality

An Executives Guide to Immediate

Business Impact

When a mission-critical application ails, the loss o

business revenue is large and swit. Poor application

quality causes highly-visible major outages; it also

causes ongoing lapses in business perormance that

are less visible, but steadily add up to substantial revenue

loss. Even minor quality improvements can result in

signifcant business gain. Yet, executives struggle

to build a business case to justiy proactive investments

in application quality. This paper presents a quantitative

ramework or measuring the immediate and positiverevenue impact o improving application quality.

Dr. Bill Curtis

Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist, CAST

Co-author CMM, People CMM, & Business Process Mat

Model, Fellow o the Institute o Electrical and Electronic

Engineers, authority on IT Sotware Quality


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The Business Value of Application Internal QualityAn Executives Guide to Immediate Business Impact

Page 1

Executive SummaryDr. Bill Curtis, SVP and Chie Scientist at CAST, presents a powerul

quantitative ramework or estimating and measuring how improvements in

application quality boost business benets and reduce IT costs.

The Problem

Whilemostbusinessescanquantifythecostsoftheirapplicationfailures,th

struggletobuildbusinesscasestojustifyproactiveinvestmentsinapplicati

qualitytopreventthesefailures.

Rarelyareproduction-environmentfailuresduetobotchedfunctional

requirementsalltooftentheyarecausedbynon-functionaldefectsdefe

thatresultfrompoordesignandcodingthatliehiddenuntiltheyareruthl

exposedduringbusinessoperations.

Poorapplicationqualitycreatesseveraldangerousproblemsthatputcurre

andfuturebusinessrevenueatriskoutagesincriticalbusinesssystems,corrupteddata,securitybreaches,andregulatorynon-compliance.These

problemsusuallyescapedetectionduringtesting.

Theresult:DeathbyaThousandCuts.Businessperformanceproblemsdu

topoorapplicationinternalqualitysubstantiallydecreasebusinessvaluea

increaseITcoststhroughoutanapplicationsusefullife.

The Solution

Throughextensiveresearchandreal-worldexperienceinserving650+

enterprisesworldwide,CASThasidentiedvekeyareasofinternalsoftw

qualitythatmostaffectbusinessoutcomestheCASTApplicationHealth

Factors.

ImprovingtheseApplicationHealthFactorshasadirectimpactonincreas

businessproductivity,acceleratingspeedtomarket,improvingcustomer

experience,anddecreasingITcosts.Itsawin-winsituation:substantial

businessbenetatlowerITcost.


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Contents

I. Why Is the Internal Quality

o a Business Application

Important?

II. How Do You Measure the

Internal Quality o a Business

Application?

III. How Health Factors Aect

Business Value

IV. Reducing Risks to the Business

V. Maximizing Customer

Experience

VI. Increasing Business Agility

VII. Improving Business

Productivity

VIII. Increasing ITs ContributionIX. An Example o Business Loss

Due to Poor Internal Quality

X. The Value or Improving the

Internal Quality o Applications

I. Why Is the Internal Quality of a Business Application Important?

As companies conduct more o their critical business activities online, conce

over the quality o IT applications has moved rom the IT department to the

boardroom. Downtime on a retail e-business Website can be measured in lost

sales. Compromised customer records can be measured in customer deectio

Corrupted nancial data can be measured in restatement costs. All three can

measured in lines o bad press.

The types o application problems that most requently cause these disasters

not deects in unctional logic what the application is supposed to do. Rat

they are caused by the non-unctional deects that result rom poor design an

coding how the application does it. Most unctional deects are detected

during development through reviews and testing. The non-unctional deects

oten lie hidden beneath the surace o an application until they are triggered

during ordinary business operations and cause embarrassing calamities. As

Diomidis Spinellis points out in his recent book, Code Quality, a ailure to

satisy a non-unctional requirement can be critical, even catastrophicnon-

unctional requirements are sometimes dicult to veriy. We cannot write a tcase to veriy a systems reliability.

While most businesses can quantiy the costs o their application ailures, th

struggle to build business cases necessary to justiy proactive investments in

application quality that prevent these embarrassments. This paper presents

a ramework or estimating and measuring how improvements in application

quality relate to business value. Projecting the actual business benets an

organization will achieve by improving the internal quality o an application

requires a detailed knowledge o the business it serves

II. How Do You Measure the Internal Quality of a Business Application?

The internal quality o an application describes among other attributes the

soundness o its architectural design and the extent to which its implementat

ollows proven coding best practices. Internal quality is not measured by pas

test cases that were mostly designed to veriy the unctional correctness o an

application. Rather, measures o internal quality assess the non-unctional

attributes o the application the internal structure and engineering of its cod


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Through extensive research and industrial experience CAST has identied

areas o internal sotware quality that most aect business outcomes. These

areas, or health actors, are similar but not identical to the high level sotwa

quality measures dened in ISO 9126. Each o these ve areas can be assess

by measuring numerous attributes o the sotware, and then aggregating the

results into a summary health actor or that area (see Table 1). These health

actors summarize internal sotware quality at a level that can be related to

business outcomes and value. These health actors and some o the business

benets they aect are summarized in Table 1.

CAST has identifed fve key areas

o internal sotware quality that

most aect business outcomes.

Table 1 - Application Health Factors and Their Benefts to the Business

Health Factor Description Example business benefts

Transerability Attributes that allow new teams or members to

quickly understand and work with an application

Reduces inefciency in transferring application work between

teams

Reduces learning curves

Reduces lock-in to suppliers

Changeability Attributes that make an application easier and

quicker to modify

Improves business agility in responding to markets or customers

Reduces cost of ownership by reducing modication effort

Robustness Attributes that affect the stability of the

application and the likelihood of introducing

defects when modifying it

Improves availability of the business function or service

Reduces risk of loss due to operational malfunction

Reduces cost of application ownership by reducing rework

Perormance Attributes that affect the performance of an

application

Reduces risk of losing customers from poor service or response

Improves productivity of those who use the application

Increases speed of making decisions and providing information

Improves ability to scale application to support business growth

Security Attributes that affect an applications ability to

prevent unauthorized intrusions

Improves protection of competitive information-based assets

Reduces risk of loss in customer condence or nancial damages Improves compliance with security-related standards and

mandates


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III. How Health Factors Affect Business Value

There are ve primary business objectives against which the costs o an

applications poor internal quality can be assessed. These business objective

include:

Reducingriskstothebusiness

Increasingbusinessagility

ImprovingbusinessproductivityOptimizingITscontributiontotheBusiness

Improvingcustomerexperience

The internal quality o business applications is critical or achieving importa

IT outcomes. These IT outcomes in turn aect a large number o business

outcomes that are critical or achieving business objectives. This chain o val

creation rom application health actors to business objectives is depicted in

the right to let fow o relationships in Figure 1. These relationships do not

represent a one-to-one mapping since health actors and IT objectives interac

myriad ways with business outcomes and objectives.

Figure 1. Relationships between health actors and business objectives

The internal quality o business

applications is critical or achieving

important IT outcomes, which in

turn are critical or achieving key

business objectives.

Maximize business availability

Minimize degraded service

Minimize lost revenue

Minimize liquidated damages

Minimize customer costs

Minimize data reconstruction

Minimize unwanted breaches

Maximize information protection

Maximize customer confidence

Maximize customer retention

Maximize standards compliance

Accelerate market responsesIncrease customer timeliness

Support mass customization

Support business growth

Accelerate new functionality

Accelerate information retrieval

Increase new functionality

Increase resource availability

Reduce cost of ownership

Reduce operational costs

Reduce vendor lock-in

Reduce existing defects

Reduce new defects

Improve stability

Ensure architectural integrity

Reduce security vulnerablities

Ensure coding rule compliance

Improve performance

Reduce code complexity

Maximize scalability

Reduce modification effort

Reduce rework

Improve code readability

Reduce learning curves

Ease team handoffs

Minimizebuziness

risks

BusinessObjectives

BusinessOutcomes

ITObjectives

HealthFactors

Increasebusiness

agility

Improvebusiness

productivity

OptimizeIT's

contribution

Robustness

Security

Performance

Changeability

Transferability


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Each business objective may be composed rom a set o more specic objecti

against which the value o application quality can be assessed. For instance,

business risks come in several types:

outagesincriticalbusinesssystems,

corrupteddata,

violatedsecurity,and

regulatorynoncompliance.

Each o these more specic business objectives may have a unique set o

business outcomes that aect it. IT outcomes will dier on which specic

business outcomes they most aect. Figure 2 displays this more detailed

analysis o how health actors aect o the our specic business objectives

underlying the objective o reducing business risks.

Although we could represent these relationships with greater sophistication

using systems dynamics, this diagram is adequate to show that the internal

quality o an application has direct and wide-ranging impact on business

outcomes and the achievement o business objectives. Even without building

a quantitative model o the relationships in this diagram, it is possible to use

simple equations that express how application quality aects the business va

derived rom an application.

We dont need sophisticated

models to show the connection

between application quality

and business objectives. Simple

equations will do.

BusinessObjectives

BusinessOutcomes

ITObjectives

HealthFactors

Minimizebuzinessrisks

Robustness

Security

Performance

Changeability

System

outages

Corrupteddata

Violatedsecurity

Non-compliance

Maximize business availability

Minimize degraded service

Minimize lost revenue

Minimize liquidated damagesMinimize customer costs

Minimize data reconstruction

Minimize unwanted breaches

Maximize information protection

Maximize customer confidence

Maximize customer retention

Maximize standards compliance

Reduce existing defects

Reduce new defects

Improve stability

Ensure architectural integrity

Reduce security vulnerablities

Ensure coding rule compliance

Improve performance

Maximize scalability

Figure 2. Relationships between Health Factors and Specifc Business Risk Objectives


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The cost o internal quality

problems can be expressed as

the loss o known current or uture

revenue, the cost o underutilized

workers, liquidated damages, andother costs based on historical

business data.

The next sections will present equations that demonstrate how these

relationships can be used to express the business value o the internal quality

applications. These equations are not presented as ormal ROI analyses, sinc

we do not include the cost o money, investment recovery periods, and other

components o ormal ROI models. Rather they represent loss unctions attac

to each business objective that indicate how poor internal quality is translate

into lost revenue and increased costs.

IV. Reducing Risks to the Business

Business risks oten present the easiest case or quantiying quality benets.

cost o quality problems can be expressed as the loss o known current or utu

revenue, the cost o underutilized workers, liquidated damages, and other cos

based on historical business data. Dierent types o risks experience dieren

types o losses.

Outages that terminate business transactions Consider a simpliedevaluation o the loss due to an outage in a commercial application such as a

reservation or customer order system. The costs involve lost revenue, eort o

the business to recover and reactivate transactions, spikes in help desk and

related costs or managing customer interactions, liquidated damages, and ot

costs that may be unique to the specic area o business. Although not all co

may be triggered in each outage, they should be considered to ensure they do

remain hidden in ongoing business activities.

Loss =((avg.revenueperminute)x(numberofminutesunavilable))+

costtoreactivatebusiness+

((Additionalcustomerserviceminutes)x($perminute)+

futurerevenuelostfromdefectingcustomers+

liquidateddamagesifapplicable+

otherrelatedcosts)


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Although expensive, the identifable

costs o security breaches are oten

less than the lost revenue rom

customers who either no longer

use the application or who deectto competitors they perceive to be

more secure.

Corrupted data The costs associated with corrupted data include recreatin

accurate data, redeveloping or correcting inaccurate outputs and reports, and

any liabilities resulting rom the use or reporting o inaccurate data. The cost

o data corruption is compounded by the length o time beore the inaccurate

data is detected, since in many cases this makes the cleanup more extensive.

The business bears many o the costs o data corruption either through having

correct the data or or unproductive downtime while IT restores accurate data

Loss =costofdatareconstruction+

costofrecreatingaccuratereports+

liabilitiescreatedfrominaccuratedata+

otherrelatedcosts

Violated security Deects in an applications architecture or code oten

create vulnerabilities that hackers and cyber-criminals exploit to penetrate

the system. These costs can include those related to thet o business or

customer inormation, repairing malicious damage, inorming customers o

possible compromised inormation, security improvements to systems and

business processes, liquidated damages, and lost uture revenue rom deecti

customers. Although expensive, the identiable costs o these breaches are

oten less than the lost revenue rom customers who either no longer use the

application or who deect to competitors they perceive to be more secure.

Loss =costofstolenresources+

costofrectifyingdata,records,oraccounts+

costofinformingcustomers+

costofsecurityimprovements+


liquidateddamagesifapplicable


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The more conusing the interace,

the more customer support

personnel must be available to

assist customers in completing

transactions. Usability andresponsiveness contribute

to revenue growth and lower

customer interaction costs.

Regulatory noncompliance Weaknesses in an applications code can place

enterprise in non-compliance with industry standards or government regulati

While noncompliance can result in nancial penalties, violations o regulatio

such as Sarbanes-Oxley can have criminal implications.

Loss =costofpenaltiesfornoncompliance+

costofbringingthesystemintocompliance

V. Maximizing Customer Experience

As more customer transactions move online, business applications increasing

become the ace o the business. The customers experience with the compan

becomes their experience with the applications usability and perormance.

Conusing user interaces, labyrinthine Websites, and glacially slow system

responses rustrate customers. At a minimum, these problems reduce the amo

o business a customer may transact, and in the worst case they drive custom

to competitors.

To compound the customer loyalty problem, conused customers create even

more costs per transaction. When customers have diculty using a company

automated business systems, they call customer support to conduct transactio

that could have been perormed online. The more conusing the interace, the

more customer support personnel must be available to assist customers in

completing transactions. For instance, when system response is slow, custom

oten begin pushing buttons that may be interpreted as commands to pages th

have yet to display. Many o these incorrect entries require sta time to undo

return to the original state in a customers account. Usability and responsiven

contribute to revenue growth and lower customer interaction costs.

Loss =futurerevenuelostfromdepartingcustomers+

futurerevenuelostfromreducedtransactionswithloyalcustomers

costofconductingtransactionsshiftedfromonlinetocustomerserv

costofcustomerservicecallsrelatedtoonlinedifculties


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The more needlessly complex

the architecture or coding o an

application, the longer it takes to

add or modiy unctionality, veriy

its correctness, and deliver it intooperation. Improving agility and

reducing business risk produce

immediate business benefts.

VI. Increasing Business Agility

Modern communication technology (cellular grids, the Internet, etc.) has

multiplied the pace o business. Consequently, competition has shrunk the

time available or responding to customer demands and market conditions. T

agility o a business in responding quickly is strictly limited by the internal

quality o its applications. The more needlessly complex the architecture or

coding o an application, the longer it takes to add or modiy unctionality, ve

its correctness, and deliver it into operation. Worse, unnecessary complexityinduces more mistakes and rework lengthening the time to develop and trans

new unctionality into operation.

Loss =revenuelostfrommissingthecustomersbuyingwindow+

revenuelosttofastermovingcompetitors+


diminishedprotfromdilutionofrstmoveradvantage+

diminishedeconomyofscalefromlossofmarketshare

The value o internal sotware quality to business agility is in terms o lost

opportunity cost. It represents the lost revenue or market share experienced

when competitors can respond quicker or when the response misses the

customers buying window. The importance o business agility cannot be

overstated or long term business viability and growth. Both improving agility

and reducing business risk produce immediate business benets. However,

improvements in business agility also aect a companys ability to execute it

business strategy and optimize long term results.


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Outages aect more than business

revenue. They drain IT sta

productivity and morale.

VII. Improving Business Productivity

Since a primary purpose o many applications is to improve business

productivity, deects which cause outages or perormance degradation rob the

organization o the ull benet rom its investment in both the application and

the workorce using it. Business losses caused by outages were covered as

business risks. The productivity impact on employees and revenue generatio

will be treated separately here. The costs o lost productivity are usually

calculated in terms o additional personhours to complete work or o lostopportunity or revenue generation. Even i the additional hours were perorm

as unpaid overtime, there is an impact on sta morale that can urther reduce

productivity or induce voluntary turnover. In addition, reduced productivity c

inject delays into the completion o tasks that have other costs such as penalt

or late delivery.

Loss =[(1(reducedoutputunderdegradedperformance

avg.outputatnormalperformance))

xnumberofworkersaffected

x

avg.hourlycostxhoursofdegradedperformance]+

[(1(reducedoutputorrevenueunderdegradedperformance

avg.outputorrevenueatnormalperformance))

xperformance

xavg.revenueperhour]+

costsofdelayedwork

VIII. Increasing ITs Contribution

For most large enterprises, IT is unded as a xed percent o the corporatebudget, typically rom 4% to 4.5%. Since IT is a xed percent in the budget,

cost savings in IT usually translate into reed resources available or addition

work, rather than as a return o unds to the business. The value proposition

then becomes, How can we get more business unctionality or our xed

investment?


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Studies have proven that 50%

o maintenance work is devoted

to trying to understand the code

rather than adding unctionality.

Reductions in code complexity canreduce this understanding time

so that more time can be spent

developing valuable unctionality.

Usually around hal o ITs budget is spent on application development

and maintenance. The internal quality o business applications controls a

surprisingly large proportion o these costs and dictates how much o applica

development resource will be allocated. For instance, every hour spent in

rework xing quality problems is a lost opportunity to provide additional valu

to the business. Similarly, studies have proven that 50% o maintenance work

is devoted to trying to understand the code rather than adding unctionality.

Reductions in code complexity can reduce this understanding time so that m

time can be spent developing valuable unctionality.

Loss =((proportionofannualeffortspentonrework)

x(avg.burdenedcostofadeveloper)x(numberofdevelopers))+

(((Proportionannualeffortspentmodifyingorenhancingexisting

code)x(.5proportionofmaintenancespentunderstanding))

x(avg.burdenedcostofadeveloper)x(numberofdevelopers))

IX. An Example of Business Loss Due to Poor Internal Quality

Using the ormula or application outages that terminate business transaction

consider the business costs o a 1-hour outage or an application that yields

$120 in revenue per minute ($7200 per hour). In addition to lost revenue, the

business will spend $1000 in employee time to veriy, correct, or regenerate

partially completed transactions and to veriy the system is working correctly

when brought back online. The help desk experienced a surge o 250 additio

minutes o customer service calls at $2 per minute. Business intelligence

analyses discovered that 20 existing customers made no urther contact with

the company ater the outage, with annual revenues rom those customers bei

$150 per year. Fortunately this application did not involve any liquidateddamages. This total cost o this outage is estimated to be:

Loss =((60minutes)x($120perminute))+$1000reactivationcost+

$500customerservicecosts+$3000lostcustomerrevenuethisyear

Loss =$11,700


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A 10% decline in application

perormance can quickly add up

to almost hal a million dollars o

business productivity loss in a

quarter.

I the company experienced a 1 hour outage with this application once per

quarter, the total annual loss to the business just rom outages would be $46,

not including IT costs or repairing the cause o ailure, retesting the applicat

and similar IT costs. These IT costs will be treated as rework in a subsequent

analysis since they reduce ITs ability to contribute to the business.

Next consider that in addition to outages this applications perormance

degrades by 10% due to poor database access procedures that reduce its abilto handle an increasing load o business transactions. Also consider that this

application supports 100 knowledge workers whose ully burdened cost is $2

per hour. This loss o productivity is calculated both as lost revenue and as lo

in the productive value o knowledge worker compensation. The cost o this

applications internal quality problems per quarter is estimated to be:

Loss =((0.1output)x(100workers)x($25perhour)

x(500hoursperquarter))*

((0.1output)x($7200revenueperhour)x(500hoursperquarter))

Loss = $485,000perquarter

This number may be reduced by voluntary unpaid overtime to get work

completed. Nevertheless, poor internal quality is still robbing the organizatio

o a substantial portion on its expected return rom the investment in this

application and its workorce.

Finally consider the cost o enhancing and maintaining this application.

Consider there are 5 developers assigned ull time to this application with an

annual ully burdened cost o $100,000 each. Approximately 35% o their tim

is spent xing deects, while 50% is spent maintaining and enhancing existin

code. The estimated lost contribution rom investment in IT by the business i

Loss =((.35proportionofrework)x($100,000burdenedrate)

x(5developers))+

(((.5annualeffortspentonmodication)x(.5proportionof

maintenancespentunderstanding))x($100,000burdenedrate)

x(5developers))

Loss =$300,000


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When the value o sotware

quality is computed only against

development or maintenance

costs, the ull impact o the loss

remains invisible to the business.However, when computed against

business costs and lost business

opportunities, a strong business

case can be made or investing in

quality.

The loss rom the risk o outages, lost business productivity, and the lost

contribution rom IT attributed to poor quality, is surprisingly large. Based

on the sizes o these losses, improvements in the quality o applications oer

substantial benets to the business. When the value o sotware quality is

computed only against development or maintenance costs ully contained wit

IT, the ull impact o loss due to poor quality remains invisible to the busines

However, when computed against business costs and lost opportunities, it is

much easier to make a strong case or investing in quality.

X. The Value for Improving the Internal Quality of Applications

Improving the quality o applications has two components; external, unctional

quality and internal, non-unctional quality. Most deect detection and related

quality activities built into standard application development and maintenance

processes ocus on external or unctional quality. These are the deects that repre

deviations rom the specied requirements or the application. Advances in testin

peer review, and requirements management processes and technology have impr

the ability o application development teams to detect and remove the majority o

these deects beore placing the application into operation.

Since internal, non-unctional quality problems are harder to detect, hidden as th

are in the architecture and engineering o the application, they are requently the

causes o outages, degraded perormance, security breaches, corrupted data, and

similar problems. These quality problems come in a wide range o maniestations

rom bad coding techniques, to needlessly complex designs, to violations o codin

standards. By detecting these internal quality problems and correcting those with

most critical priorities, application developers can dramatically increase the valuan application to the business.

Returning to our example application in the last section, correcting a non-unctio

deect that would cause a 1-hour outage will save the business $11,700 per outag

more i the outage were to last longer than an hour. Now consider the productivity

impact o removing internal quality problems that reduce the degraded perorma

rom 10% o its original capacity down to only 7% o original capacity. The impac

would save the business $145,500 per quarter rom the original loss o $485,000

(gure 3).


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Loss =((0.07output)x(100workers)x($25perhour)

x(500hoursperquarter))+

((0.07output)x($7200revenueperhour)x(500hoursperquarter)

Loss =$339,500perquarter

Figure 3. Example reduction in quarterly lost productivity rom improving applica tion perormance

There are two ways that improvements in internal quality can aect the

contribution o IT to the business. I improvements in the internal quality o t

application were to reduce the proportion o annual eort absorbed in rework

to 25%, then the team could contribute $50,000 more eort to producing new

unctionality or the business. Similarly, i improvements to the internal qual

o the application reduced its complexity and developers spent only 40% o t

modication/enhancement time understanding the code, they could contribut

$25,000 more eort to producing new unctionality or the business. As show

below, the amount o lost contribution to the business has been reduced to$225,000 with improvements to internal quality reeing $75,000 o eort to

contribute more value to the business.

Loss =((.25proportionofrework)x($100,000burdenedrate)

x(5developers))+

(((.5annualeffortspentonmodication)x.4proportionof

maintenancespentunderstanding)x($100,000burdenedrate)

x(5developers))

Loss =$225,000

When internal quality improvements

reduce rework by 25% a year and

enable maintenance sta to spend

60% less time making sense o the

code, it rees up $75,000 o eortper application or creating new

business unctionality.

Before remediation After remediation$0

$100,000

$200,000

$300,000

$400,000

$500,000

$600,000


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By proactively detecting internal

quality problems and correcting

them, IT teams can dramatically

increase the business value o an

application.

Figure 4. Example reduced quarterly loss in IT contribution to the business ater improving internal application qu

Compared to the licensing, installation, learning, and usage costs o automate

tools or identiying internal quality problems, the ROI or internal quality

improvements is substantial. Amounts will dier by the size and related

attributes o the application, but or business-critical applications the value t

the business o improvements is dramatic and long-lasting. IT organizations

must crat these types o analyses to deend their investments in improving th

internal quality o applications.

Before remediation After remediation$0

$50,000

$100,000

$150,000

$200,000

$250,000

$300,000

$350,000


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www.castsoftware.com

CAST Headquarters

North America: +1 212-871-8330

Europe: +33 1 46 90 21 00

About CAST

CASTs unique technology is the result omore than $70 million in R&D investment.Top engineering talent, dedicated to buildingthe best technology or assessing the internalquality o mission-critical applications,has made CAST the leader in Automated

Application Intelligence. CASTs mission is toenable the worlds best enterprises to achievesignifcantly more business productivity romtheir complex IT sotware systems.

Founded in 1990, CAST has helped more than650 organizations worldwide speed IT deliveryto the business, mitigate risks in production,improve customer experience, and reducethe total cost o application ownership.CAST is listed on NYSE-Euronext (Euronext:CAS) and serves Global 2000 organizationsworldwide with a global network o locationsin the US and Europe.

Bill Curtis is an industry luminary who is responsible orinfuencing CASTs scientic and strategic direction, as well

as helping CAST educate the IT market on the importance o

managing and measuring the internal quality o its sotware.

He is best known or leading the development o the Capability

Maturity Model (CMM) which has become the global standard or

evaluating the capability o sotware development organizations.

Prior to joining CAST, Dr. Curtis was a Co-Founder o TeraQuest,

the global leader in CMM-based services, which was acquired

by Borland. Prior to TeraQuest, he directed the Sotware

Process Program at the Sotware Engineering Institute (SEI)

at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to the SEI he directed

research on intelligent user interace technology and the sotware

design process at MCC, the th generation computer research

consortium in Austin, Texas. Beore MCC he developed a sotware

productivity and quality measurement system or ITT, managed

research on sotware practices and metrics at GE Space Division,

and taught statistics at the University o Washington.

Dr. Curtis holds a Ph.D. rom Texas Christian University, an M.A.

rom the University o Texas, and a B.A. rom Eckerd College. Hewas recently elected a Fellow o the Institute o Electrical and

Electronics Engineers or his contributions to sotware process

improvement and measurement.

Dr. Bill Curtis

Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist

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