History
Company Biography
Compita Limited was founded in the UK (Scotland) in 1991 as an institution for technology transfer relating to process management. We are giving advice to customers with high expertise and focusing on shifting skills. Especially for the improvement it is important to train Assessors and Lead Assessors, so we have established and are operating the assessor qualification scheme, and we have nurtured many assessors and lead assessors so far. We have also provided skill trainings on core processes such as Project management, Configuration mnagement, Requirements management, Risk management and so on.
We are familiar with models such as ISO9000, TickIT, ISO/IEC 15504/33k, Automotive SPICE, CMM®, CMMI®, TMMi®, ITIL, Business Excellence, and now we have systematized portfolios of improvements and assessment methods and tools that we have cultivated so far.
The Early Days
In the past, we were based in the small town of South Queensferry on the bank of the Forth River running north of Edinburgh. At the time, it was a company composed of three experts on Quality Improvement Program for small and medium enterprises (QIP), contributing to achieve ISO 9000 and TickIT by small and medium enterprises.
In 1992, we began offering Software Technology Diagnostics (STD), a framework for assessing process capabilities and the first"ISO club" was also held. The ISO club was built on the experiences from QIP, and the Proces Standards, Procedures and templates were used to quickly realize the Quality Mnagement System. These were also developed by the Compita.
Same year, the founder Mac Craigmile was invited to participate as a technical consultant to the working group that established the international standard ISO 15504, SPICE project. There, he greatly contributed to development of Process Improvement and Capability Evaluation guide, and it has become a particularly prominent among expert groups participating from many countries.
In 1994, a training department was established as a professional company offering skill trainings including assessment.
Based on the procedures and templates developed for the "ISO club", "ISO Plus" was developped and provided to 29 countries around the world. After that, the full set of procedures, checklists and templates for the Quality Management System that achieve ISO 9001 and TickIT certification were completed and provided by the name of "Quality Kit".
The Process Professional Portfolio
In August 1996, various methods and tools for process management were organized as a process professional portfolio. In 1997, supporting for CMM® was started and in the summer of 1998, the Process Professional Assessment (PPA) method that constitutes the core part of the process professional portfolio received endorsment from SEI (Software Engineering Institute) that states PPA is fully compliant with the "CAF" (CMM Appraisal Framework).
Since 1996, process professionals have been used broadly at companies conducting assessments based on ISO 15504 and CMM. Support for CMMI® was started in 2002.
In 1997, Business Excellence Benchmarking Group (BEBG) was launched and we actively promoted an independent forum to share knowledge. Today, this group is named Business Excellence Exchange (BEx2).
Base
In 1998, we based our headquarters at the business centre in the town of Livingston, situated on the M8 corridor between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is close to Edinburgh Airport.
In the latter half of 2001, we added base in Japan.
The Future...
We aim to steadily address global, customer-oriented services.