Fuzzy logic based group maturity rating for software performance prediction

Driven by market requirements, software services organizations have adopted various software engineering process models (such as capability maturity model (CMM), capability maturity model integration (CMMI), ISO 9001:2000, etc.) and practice of the project management concepts defined in the project management body of knowledge. While this has definitely helped organizations to bring some methods into the software development madness, there always exists a demand for comparing various groups within the organization in terms of the practice of these defined process models. Even though there exist many metrics for comparison, considering the variety of projects in terms of technology, life cycle, etc., finding a single metric that caters to this is a difficult task. This paper proposes a model for arriving at a rating on group maturity within the organization. Considering the linguistic or imprecise and uncertain nature of software measurements, fuzzy logic approach is used for the proposed model. Without the barriers like technology or life cycle difference, the proposed model helps the organization to compare different groups within it with reasonable precision.