Writing Software is fun; fixing bugs after delivery is ghastly, losing markets and customers is a disaster.

GMC Software Technology decided seven years ago to invest into high maturity for their software operations. This talk summarizes the steps from initial stage to quantitative process management.

At the beginning, organizations find things like configuration management difficult. Why shouldn’t I correct a bug immediately after I’ve found it? Even during testing? The seven basic process areas of level two are all but easy to institutionalize when you get started. However, once you have it, you cannot imagine how it ever worked before without it. And indeed, it didn’t work at all, but maybe your customers didn’t tell you.

However, when you advance towards level 3 and get hands on with organizational process areas, institutionalize organizational training, manage your error density from development to testing down to delivery, your customers start noticing it. You might become famous for delivering (almost) bug-free code. It opens new markets for you, and the more you have your Require­ments Development under control, the better you manage meeting market needs in time.

However, this is not all. Using numbers to manage your key quality objectives is more fun and more effective. It means that you consistently have to measure your processes and use these measurements to improve and stabilize your processes. The benefits of this are tremendous.

Today, GMC Software Technology has a reputation of providing the best software in its area, wins prices, open new markets at a remarkable speed and grows consistently at a 30 – 50% rate. This talk explains how you can achieve that, how to start and how to proceed, because today’s world is widely open for high maturity software companies.