Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences

ITS473 – SOFTWARE IMPROVEMENT

CASE STUDY REPORT OF CMMI IMPLEMENTATION AT

BANK OF MONTREAL (BMO) FINANCIAL GROUP

NAME : NAZEYRA BT JAMALUDDIN

STUDENT ID : 2020996855
GROUP : CS2463A
LECTURER’S NAME : DR. SURIYATI RAZALI
Section 1
Bank of Montreal (BMO) has been in the banking and financial industry since 1817. It is a
multinational investment bank and financial services company from Canada. BMO is the one of
ten largest such organizations in North America and assets of $196 billion. On June 1817, John
Richardson and eight other merchants signed the Articles of Association to established the
Montreal Bank in a rented house. The bank started to conducting business on November 1817.
It is the oldest bank in the Canada. BMO has more than 900 branches and serving over seven
million customers.
BMO Financial Group, it has substantial operations in the Chicago area where it
operates BMO Harris bank. It made up of three groups including Personal and Commercial
Client Group (P&C), Private Client Group (PCG) and Investment Banking Group. Meanwhile,
BMO Capital Markets is a BMO investment and corporate banking division. BMO Nesbitt Burns
is the wealth management division.
BMO known for innovation and continually develops and integrates new software
solutions to keep up the competitive position. Not only that, it also provides enhanced services
to its customers. Because of the ongoing commitment to improve the productivity, BMO has led
to adopt the Carnegie Mellon CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) approach. It believes
that will enhances its effectiveness, decision making process and overall operational
effectiveness.
Section 2
BMO itself faced many issues and challenges in sub-optimization of internal software
development by Software Engineering Institute. These specific issues were identified in the
software development process. They identified that “firefighting” schedule were unpredictable
and a way of life and cost. It is must be dealt with it immediately. It required the number of
changes orders being managed coming through a specific project were huge. A frequent need
for emergency actions will be reflect the lack of organization or poor planning. It will be resulting
in cost overruns and longer lead times.
Some of the project-related data was neither collected nor systematically analyzed. A
few process and software development process were available, controlled and fully documented
but not established. There are also evidence shows the significant problems with
documentation. For examples, data are hard to find, incomplete, different types of form such as
different layouts and standard. They tried to obtain peer reviews but it was difficult to
encouraged people to provide a review. Furthermore, BMO Software Development team held
belief that they did not have time or resources to do reviews.
BMO decided to take an action to solve those issues by recognition of the problem and
an identification of a structured quality process to address it. They also build the stage for
activities such as provision of CMM training, driving out action plans at regular intervals and
formal and informal CMM assessment. An independent Software Quality Assurance Group also
do a verification activity that also ensure the processes will be institutionalized improve. Then,
BMO also decided to create a process that combining pieces of existing requirement techniques
and will adding quality assurance process for verification as well. The new process that created
by BMO has produced results positively with dropping the number of software defects that
related to requirements by some 50%. This method has helped institutionalize a quality
approach and also give the bank a chance to make an improvement.
Section 3
There are four key points that leads BMO to make an improvement such as Implementation
Partner, Implementation, Outcomes and Measuring Return on Investment.
For the first key point which is Implementation Partner, BMO decided to work with
Certified consultant who could help them to help themselves to improve its processes, ultimately
and enhancing their performance. By identifying a local partner with a good reputation and
experience in the Canadian environment, it was a successful implementation. GRafP
Technologies has met all of these requirements. GRafP able to helped BMO by:

 Manager efficiently monitor the risks that are faced by the projects and take an
appropriate action to prevent these risks.
 Process Specialist conduct SEI-Authorized to identify where the productivity can
be increased.
 IT Auditors and Software Quality Assurance Analysts collect and analyze the
information that able to help them to fulfill their responsibilities.
 Investment Specialist assess the risk of investing in IT ventures, manage their
investment portfolios and negotiate fair conditions with their clients.
Based on these, an organization is them in a better position to gain a precise understanding of
its IT processes. GRafP helped BMO to achieve CMMI Maturity Level 4 in 2006 and CMMI
Level 5 in 2009.
Next, for the second key point is Implementation, BMO taking the first step with adapt
and implement the new models was training. It helped diminish suspicion and resistance often
encountered with a cultural change in the approach ways in which software development was
traditionally approached. Then, GRafP performed an initial assessment and needs-gap analysis
to assess the current position of the firm in relation to what was expected by the CMMI. All of
the procedures, processes, established policies and artifacts were analyzed to ensure that were
support the practices and process area of CMMI model. The training also undertaken in areas
such as configuration management, peer reviews and function point analysis and tool sets.
GRafP also performed a subsequent assessment two years later, showing impressive increases
in CMMI practice implementation in all evaluated process areas.
For the third key point is Outcomes, which is effects of process improvement activities
takes years of gathering and analyzing measurements around increased productivity, increased
quality, improved customer, employee satisfaction and shorter cycle times. The achievement of
CMMI Level 5, provides concretes and validated data showing the improvement in productivity.
Quality benefits give an impact on the organizational culture and advances in the service that
the firm can deliver to the clients. CMMI frameworks will ensure employees understand their
roles and responsibilities.
Lastly, for the fourth key point is Measuring Return on Investment (ROI), BMO applied
these measurement techniques to ongoing development of a specific software Derivative
System application. It is important to measure the impact of such an investment in both financial
and non-financial terms. Based on their implementation of quality processes in the ongoing
development application over a number of releases, BMO was able to achieve:

 Maintenance of support productivity was achieved 3.8 times the average.

 Enhancement of support productivity was increased to more than 2 times
industry average.
 The defects per release from an industry average was reduced from 6-12 to 2.
 The delivery performance of function was increased points per employee to
significantly above industry average.
Hence, these direct measurements of quality movement able to provide a valuable insight into
the benefits of CMMI implementation. With this level of return and be the added non-financial
benefits, it can be seen to be very advantageous to companies looking to enhance their
software development effectiveness.
Section 4
With the successful implementation of CMMI in a staged approach with increasing the maturity
level over the time, it can create many benefits for the companies. The organization need a
strong leadership and a cultural change in performance measurement to achieve the returns
possible. It also provides several non-financial benefits, which can have even more profound
impact. The quality improvement process cannot be solved in a halfhearted manner and it
requires the assignment of dedicated resources with a focused mandate. BMO is the only
second Canadian company to achieved CMMI Level 3 and to be first to achieved CMM and
CMMI level 4.BMO’s ability to see demonstrable benefits such a wide scale implementation,
enable by its internal vision and leadership and the availability of a local third party partner that
resulting the feedback on the real bottom line benefits derived from its investment in CMMI
process improvements.

References:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Montreal