Establishing a Culture for Increased Quality Awareness Using the 4 C Approach

Abstract

Global in-house software development centers of multinational companies in India need to grow to continue attracting talent. For mature centers, to grow sustainably is a challenge, because it involves these centers steadily taking on global roles for product lifecycle activities. A precondition for this is creating within team members a global mindset coupled with awareness of quality of the entire product, extending beyond the quality of a product's components. Therefore, it's necessary for the center to establish a culture for increased quality awareness so as to demonstrate quality orientation for global products. We outline how our 4 C approach, which balances culture, content, career, and compensation -- the 4 Cs, effectively enabled this cultural transformation at an in-house software development center of Siemens, a German multinational company. As part of the 4 C approach we rolled out initiatives to create quality awareness, and intensified training on software engineering, technical expertise, domain knowhow, and behavioral skills to ensure teams possess required competences and the required mindset. We also defined tool-assisted processes and workflows aimed at making code quality a habit.