Every industry benefits from clear quality standards and TÜViT has together with SIG established standard criteria (Trusted Product Maintainability) for quality evaluation, aimed specifically at improving the quality of software systems, reducing cost of ownership, managing risks and helping to establish clear client-vendor relationships.

During a unique event on 28 May 2009 at the KLM Head Office in Amstelveen the new service has been launched. Mrs Marjan Oudeman, Executive Director Corus Strip Products Division and member of the Dutch Innovation Platform, will hand over the first certificates to KLM, ProRail, KAS BANK and Rabobank, in presence of Mr. Antonius Sommer, Executive Director of TÜViT.

Henk Bothof, Director ICT-Services ProRail, says:
"It is important for ProRail ICT-Services to be accountable for delivered performance. The same holds for the quality of our software systems. A certificate that addresses the quality of software systems, and is issued by an independent party, helps with this. The certificate will help us to build, or have built, software systems with good maintainability. This is important given the long-term strategy that we have at ProRail."

About the certificate:
The world is full of certificates. The purpose of a certificate is to give written assurance that the product has been evaluated by a qualified party in a neutral and repeatable way, and has thereby been shown to meet relevant evaluation criteria. A certificate is evidence of quality, gives confidence and provides an objective basis for agreement and comparison. This is precisely what TÜVIT has created in collaboration with SIG.

The TÜViT certificate certifies that the maintainability of the product is trusted.  This means that software systems are adaptable to future needs such as regulatory requirements or new business scenarios. Large and medium organisations will be able to manage outsource contracts more effectively, will be able to control external vendors better and will be able to express their expectations more accurately.

Many SIG clients in governmental environments, but also in the financial industry have declared that they will incorporate this certificate in their Service Level Agreements, Acceptance Protocols or Terms and Conditions.

The certificate is designed to complement general accepted standards such as CMMI, ASL BiSL, ITIL and CobiT. Where CMMI relates to repeatable processes, the TÜViT certificate relates to sustainable and transparent product quality.

The certificate is based on ISO/IEC 9126, draws on extensive worldwide scientific research and has been developed and validated within SIG’s assessment practice. By measuring quantifiable properties of software systems, aggregating them into quality profiles, mapping them to ratings for systems properties and then matching those to ISO/IEC 9126 quality characteristics, we have created a five star rating system for software products analogous to the five star NCAP rating system for passenger safety in automobiles.

We foresee a future where software quality will be transparent for all stakeholders. Every stakeholder can make informed decisions due to this transparency. The willingness to invest further in IT will increase, since clients will know what to demand from vendors. Systems will last longer at lower cost and risk. Vendors will demonstrate their quality. All parties will benefit.

About the Software Improvement Group:
The Software Improvement Group (SIG) provides insight into and analysis of the quality of software systems. We make sure that our customers gain and retain control of their IT landscape. Our analysis software allows us to measure quality, to lay bare the underlying architecture and to assess the system. All this is done on the basis of automated source code analysis. SIG’s roots lie in the CWI: Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica. From the Amsterdam office we service clients around Europe.  Get insight, get in control.