Following the two-day audit of our Sibiu office and the audit of our Holding company, which was carried out today in Orléans, our ISO auditor confirmed the observations made during the two previous audits (2008 and 2009), as well as the status of our QMS (quality management system):
- we have an operational, active and dynamic system,
- the system is efficient, as most objectives are met,
- the auditor also noticed a real dynamics in the constant improvement of our practices.

There were neither major nor minor nonconformities and no sensitive issues. There are a few elements which can be improved and, above all, numerous strong points, notably:
- the continuous and systematic conformity between our QMS and the Standard
- an improvement dynamics that is present and systematic
- active customer communication (project follow-up)
- strengthened internal communication (project follow-up)
- responsibility and observing project deadlines
- capitalizing on solutions through projects.

In conclusion, the auditor will recommend to Afnor (the French standardization organization) to maintain our certificate.

I would like to thank once again all the audited employees for the quality of their preparation and presentation.
I also want to thank my two collaborators, Ioana and Thierry, for their control activities and constant support for the development of our activities.
I am also grateful to all Pentalog employees for their daily involvement in observing and improving our quality system, which is paying off!

Next year we will begin a new three-year cycle, with a new team of auditors. We will have to prove ourselves once again, this time in a more profound manner: our best days are, therefore, still ahead.

Good luck! And congratulations to everyone!

On Monday, November 29th and Tuesday, November 30th 2010, Pentalog and Pentalog Technology underwent an ISO audit in Sibiu.

Our Romanian auditor audited the following projects in particular: Galaxy (Zoltan, Marius), Spy Tracer (Nicolae, Ludovic) and ST-Ericsson facilities management (Bogdan, Alex). Zoltan was also audited for his Office Director functions.

After an audit which spanned over one and a half days, the auditor confirmed that the QMS (quality management system) of Pentalog was functioning well and emphasized numerous strong points, both general and directly linked to key ISO points:
- the competences and flexibility of Pentalog for developing projects in a rather difficult economic context, stressing the important work carried out by management teams in order to achieve good project performance;
- the rigour in allocating responsibilities in all audited projects;
- experience sharing through solution “cloning” within a project or between projects;
- the emphasis on the development of staff skills in order to build flexible and competent teams for all platforms;
- customer communication based on a proper use of software tools, constant presence of project managers and regular steering committees with different levels and periods, as well as good traceability;
- assessing customer satisfaction through IT tools.

This audit rewards the daily efforts of the Pentalog and Pentalog Technology teams, who have striven to understand and learn the company quality system, apply it efficiently and intelligently through their projects and contribute to its active development.

I would like to thank all the Sibiu employees who were audited for their excellent preparation and presentation!

Now, it is up to Orléans to capitalize on this achievement; the next audit will take place on December 6th.

Since December 2008, Pentalog and Pentalog Technology (our joint-venture with Ausy) have been ISO 9001 certified for their offices in Brasov, Bucharest and Sibiu, as well as Pentalog Iasi and Pentalog Chisinau.
The ISO certification, granted for a three-year period, was obtained following a main audit which allowed to control the practices of the group in terms of recruitment, training, sales and marketing, provider management… as well as project organization at our development and testing sites in Brasov and Chisinau. It will be renewed through two follow-up audits which will enable, after three years, to verify the conformity of all our offshore development sites in Eastern Europe. Our Vietnamese site in Hanoi, which hadn’t been created yet in 2008, but which aligned its practices to the group repository from the moment it was opened, should qualify for receiving the certification in 2011-2013.

Entering an ISO certification process has allowed Pentalog to make quick and considerable progress on its work process management and the improvements that were made by implementing the quality system have often been recognized by our customers.
If, for some of them, our rigour in formalizing specifications and detailed test plans or in holding regular progress or arbitration meetings, may sometimes seem cumbersome, in the end, there are undeniable differences in terms of transparency on the follow-up of completed workload or delivered quality, between projects conforming to our repository and those coordinated at sight, in an arbitrary manner.
Taking time to reflect, taking a step back for a better leap forward (taking more time in the conceptualization stages rather than working hastily, undoing the work, redoing it and eventually wasting time and money), this is simply what Pentalog is offering by organizing its client projects. Depending on the project context and work method, the implementation is adapted, but fundamental principles remain the same.

Customized implementation of institutionalized processes is also in agreement with the CMMI model towards which we are orienting our repository, within the specific framework of IT development and at a more advanced level of definition.

For a year now, we have been orienting our quality management system in this direction, through training sessions that we are offering our project managers and team leaders. More than 60 of them have already attended these best practices training sessions related both to the production cycle and to project follow-up and team management activities.

All our project leaders have understood and efficiently integrated these best practices into their daily management, in a gradual manner, so that changes can be noticed by the client only through the benefits that they bring them.

On November 29th and 30th, Pentalog and Pentalog Technology Sibiu, followed by the Orléans headquarters on December 6th, will be facing the 2nd follow-up audit (successfully I hope ). Then we will begin a new three-year improvement plan, more CMMI-oriented, which is also at company level. This is because at Pentalog, our certification is truly the result of a determined policy of the entire group management, the confirmation of tangible and systematic practices that are integrated at all company levels and an indisputable pillar of our growth.

In 2009, Pentalog launched a great Project managers training program, aimed at unifying the knowledge on the basics of project management and then improving the practices. 32 people already attended those trainings, first given by Pierre de Thelin and then by internal trainers.

In 2010, the program will concern more than 80 people: about 50 for the basics and 30 for advanced courses, representing 426 men days of training! The first courses started in Hanoi in January (7 people). This week is now starting the Moldo-Romanian tour, with Aleth, Cornel and Ludovic as trainers, in Chisinau, Iasi, Brasov, Sibiu and Bucuresti (44 people).

English speaking project managers and team leaders will especially be involved (last year, trainings were only in French) as well as people aimed at becoming project managers in a near future.

The courses, composed of theoretical courses and practical exercises, are organised around three sessions of two days each for basics, and 4 days for the advanced ones (practices).

Basic courses give and remind fundamentals on commercial aspects, contract management, risk management, development cycles, workload estimation, planning and management, meetings and people management (team, client).

The advanced courses go deeper in Priority management practices – in maintenance, agile and long term projects – Testing rules, practices and tools, and Business attitude.

In accordance with the quality management organisation of the company, this program already gives its results: projects are more rigorously led, for the benefit of our clients as well as our!

10 minutes to answer 10 key questions and get a quotation!

Earlier this year we initiated on 4 projects the establishment of metrics which now have greatly facilitated the development of estimates, planning and monitoring of the individual and collective efficiency on these projects. Continuing task estimates requested by the clients in third party maintenance have gained in speed and reliability. As for benchmarks, they have been refined over the past several months allowing us to go to the next stage and to be able to optimize the efficiency of our teams.

Without being really complex, this job requires above all a little discipline from the project managers and reflection (what are the best work units to retain, how to define them?). But once initiated the saving in time and the efficiency which will be generated can more than justify the investment, Mihai, Elena, Ion and Dan can surely attest to this.

This work is continuing now on “new projects”, and others that are still on the list of projects to be changed by the end of this year using the same type of method.

On the other hand, following the process reviews involving Mike, Pierre, Viorica, Maxim and others, in May, this has allowed us to make large strides in the evolution of our common methodology system.

The principle of these reviews, as always directed with great care by Pierre de Thelin is to improve the various aspects of measurement and traceability, with the theme of integrating the methods from the CMMI model (levels 2 and 3).

The collection, synthesis and improvement, in research and development has been initiated or is in the planning stage, concerning such topics as standardization of project indicators and development of reporting tools, interoperability of our planning tools, cost management and defect tracking (ePole-metric-mantis trio), with the possible integration of new tools like Enterprise Architect or Jazz, sharing of our knowledge on configuration management, the evolution of our test practice and the establishment of traceability requirements (within the CMMI definition) from the definition of requirements, to correcting anomalies, through all the phases of the software development cycle.

Specifically, new forms for commercial offers, better formulated, more detailed, more instructive – and more educational for our customers – have already emerged thanks to Helène, Sophie and Monica. Many translations, provided by Alex and Ioana, which will give access to all the corporate resources in the universal language of English (the default language of Pentalog, will always remain French). Work is continuing on the Quality plans and is nearing completion.

Ioana started a few weeks ago to collect and synthesize information on test practices in order to prepare the activities of the work groups that will be animated by Aymeric and Cornel in regards to the evolution of our tools and practices; Cornel recently validated guidelines about conference management, prepared by Ioana and Cata while LudoG is tearing his hair out trying to imagine automated project dashboards, related to our tools.

In short, the Deming wheel is rotating, quickly, or as fast as possible. And I also must improve myself: I need to communicate more…

Using the Deming Cycle, often without saying so, Pentalog committed itself in 2009 to three major areas of improvement for the company:
- Improvement of its training methods;
- The establishment of project management metrics;
- The evolution of its production activities by integrating practices from CMMI references.

In terms of training, Pentalog launched in early 2009 it’s first unprecedented challenge, that of setting up and deploying a common training curriculum for all its project managers; they were enrolled in a comprehensive 13 day program by groups, spread out over 3 years and presently 8 groups have already been identified.

A small vade mecum (handbook) for project leaders, the first course of 6 days will have a common core, which aims to upgrade the general knowledge, vocabulary and common management practices; this will be for all company project managers.

Then all the concepts discussed during the first 6 days will be studied in depth through additional modules from a half day to a day each, spread out over 7 days over the next two years and will be focused specifically on:
- Risk management;
- How to manage the project boundaries;
- How to manage his team;
- Quality assurance and testing;
- Time management and personal organization;
- How to conduct meetings and public speaking;
- The specificity of MRI, the iterative development;
- Measures and indicators.

Our consultant Pierre de Thelin piloted the first course in the 2Q, for the French project managers and Moldovan project leaders; now Ludovic (project director), Cornel (CTO) and Aleth (Quality Director) have taken over the responsibility for the deployment of this in-house training program.

This trio, which combines theory, field experience and practical discipline, aims at making the course more dynamic and inter-active which is required for this type of training, and applying specific business cases, adapting the material, over time, to our practical experience and our own feedback.

Before the end of 2009, 20 Francophone project managers from Chisinau, Iasi and Brasov, 4 project managers and 4 branch managers will have completed the program … already 18 days of training multiplied by the number of trainers involved, and preparation time involved, this is by no means a small thing! Pentalog will not skimp on resources used, and this is just the beginning!

And early next year, we will expand this program to include our English speaking project managers. We already know that about fifty people will be on the list for the first course in 2010 … Adding to these courses the supplementary courses that will be offered in 2010 … you can quickly see that this program is taking off rapidly!!

If there are any internal volunteers, to help us, (amongst those who have completed the first course in 2009), the call for applicants is now open!

And we have yet to talk about planning and implementation of technical training … that Cornel and the Incubator must organize, with the active assistance of our project managers and branch managers who will help in identifying the various needs in further training programs.

Again, if we had volunteers, they would be happily accepted!

The Management of Pentalog has voted on February 27 several major trends for the evolution of its quality management system for 2009:

- Implementation of a multi-year training course for current and future project managers,

- Improvement of project processes by incorporating methodologies from the CMMI and ITIL repositories and by generalizing the use of fine metrics in project management,

- Development of tools for capitalization and knowledge sharing within P
entalog.

The training course for PM will comprise several stages:

- A basic 6-day course, developed in three times over two days, and meant to strengthen the basic knowledge on project management, especially planning, expense management, risk management, team management and customer management;

- Supplementary half-day or full-day modules meant to explore these general notions through more and more precise exercises, and delivered within 2 years following the basic course.
Four groups have already been identified, and the 1st session will take place with a pilot group (Molodovan Project leaders and managers) by the end of April, for completion by end of June 2009. Other sessions (Romanian and Vietnamese project managers) will follow a few weeks apart.

This training is a totally new effort in the history of Pentalog, since it involves in 2009, more than 40 people, or 240 days of training, and a training time of approximately 30 days. A training meant to strengthen our management and project monitoring capabilities, all the more indispensable that we may think that in this crisis period – for an indefinite period – only the best companies will manage to extricate themselves.

In parallel to this training plan, the project processes in our repository and our project management will be drawn up, thanks to a major work on design traceability (specifications related to development), risk management, tests and measures for project performance (CMMI, metric).

The fine decomposition of the time spent on development, but also on design and testing, in basic work units, specific to every technology project and skill level, will allow the adjustment of the ETC and the optimization of task planning in order to better control productivity and efficiency: more relevant and timely estimates, better compliance with the milestones, stricter control over differences, measurement of objectives achievement.

These metrics and the different project assessments that we have begun to implement, will also be used to build a database containing estimations, final data, statistics on errors, best practices and examples of what not to do, in order to capitalize our experience and improve our practices at all times. These data will directly benefit our customers in the context of estimates and Pilot projects.

The implementation of metrics has already begun in several large projects and will expand to all projects by the end of the first semester of 2009. The improvement of production processes is, in turn, planned for April-June 2009.

It was a nice Christmas present offered by the French Standardization Office: Pentalog passed ISO-9001: 2008 certification on December 24, 2008!

This achievement stands for international recognition of Pentalog’s commitment in terms of quality and of the improvement process Pentalog has been involved in since September 2007. This process was meant to improve internal efficiency and customer satisfaction, by fulfilling two obvious and unquestionable needs:

-increasing the final quality of software and solutions offered to Pentalog’s clients.

-improving Pentalog’s capacity to support its clients’ growth, while meeting quality standards.

The ISO 9001 quality standard provided the right framework for this approach. As a general standard, ISO 9001 defines a list of organizational requirements necessary for the existence of a quality management system (QMS) with four directions: commitment and responsibility of the Management board , identification and management of processes contributing to customer/employee satisfaction, protection of skills, continuous improvement. A QMS based on ISO 9001 helps improving customer care, so as to offer products or services that meet the customer’s needs. Internally, it also emphasizes skills management, optimization of the use of resources through greater involvement of the staff and improvement of the entity’s processes. Pentalog has chosen the ISO 9001 standard because it will provide large and transverse company foundations allowing to turn towards more specific systems such as CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) or the EFQM excellence model in the future.

Pentalog’s pragmatic QMS offers a more formal working environment, based on common tools and methods, implemented in a systematic manner by all the collaborators, within projects as well as in the scope of purchase management, HR management, infrastructure management, marketing, sales or communication. The implementation of Pentalog’s QMS was achieved along with a close collaboration with its clients, who could already measure the progress made.

The certification perimeter of Pentalog includes all activities offered to its clients: Software design and development, application maintenance, technical support, infrastructure management and Business Process Outsourcing.

It applies to all currently existing Pentalog offices, that means Orléans (headquarters), the Romanian offices (Brasov, Bucarest, Iasi and Sibiu) and the Moldovan-one (Chisinau), as well as the common Pentalog-Ausy branch, Pentalog Technology, in Brasov. The Pentalog Technology office in Sibiu was being created at the time of the audit, so it should enter the certification perimeter in 2009; the Pentalog office in Hanoï (Vietnam) should get certified in the next two years.

Being involved in a continuous improvement process through the ISO standards, in 2009 Pentalog will begin to integrate different elements from other systems such as CMMI or EFQM (work units, Balanced Scorecard…) within its methods and processes.