CSIA expands “Best Practices & Benchmarks” guidelines

The Control and Information System Integrators Association (CSIA) recently published its updated and expanded ''Best Practices & Benchmarks'' guidelines—the keystone of the association's Registered Member program.

By Control Engineering Staff August 7, 2003

The Control and Information System Integrators Association (CSIA) recently published its updated and expanded ”Best Practices & Benchmarks” guidelines—the keystone of the association’s Registered Member program.

The guidelines include the newly adopted Technical Management section, a departure from the initial six sections, which focused on the business side of system integration. This new section further reinforces the association’s credo that ”being a good system integrator goes hand in hand with being a good business manager.” It asks those members planning to become ”registered” to focus on the technical solutions process and the resources required to implement it. Potential registrants will be asked to evaluate their operations in light of seven areas in the new technical management section: technical infrastructure; project process; testing; configuration management; reuse management; technical training; and client information assessment.

The new technical management section is now part of the evaluation process that every system integrator seeking CSIA registration must successfully complete, and that registered integrators must undergo every three years. CSIA wants all its members to achieve registration by 2006.

This important step was introduced at CSIA’S Annual Meeting and Executive Conference this past May in New Orleans. The next meeting is scheduled for May 13-16, 2004, in Palm Desert, CA.