Capability Maturity Models (CMM)

Over the past five years, the progress of the wave of process improvement initiatives is very visible. Why have software organizations embarked on the CMM for more than a decade? Several answers to this question exist. Certainly it is all about competition and leverage advantage. The trend in the industry as a whole is growing toward higher maturity levels. Companies have started to realize that momentum is critical, the business climate and the software marketplace have changed, companies need to fight for new business and market shares, and customers expect excellence, operational performance, and professionalism. Outstanding companies certainly do not embark on Process Improvement because they collect “medals.” The road to maturity has also demonstrated that a focus on software components is not sufficient. First, the environment within which engineering is performed has become increasingly complex. Efforts are larger, involve more people, cross corporation boundaries, are distributed far and wide, and must adhere to continually compressing implementation schedules to meet customer needs and heightened expectations. Second, the way in which engineering work is performed has evolved. Cross-discipline teams, concurrent engineering, highly automated processes, and multinational standards have all affected engineering practice. These changes in turn have caused modifications to the role of the engineering manager. Third, the success of the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI's) Capability Maturity Model for Software has led to a proliferation of models, each of which addresses process improvement from the aspect of a particular discipline. Organizations have adopted multiple improvement models to address their critical processes. All of these changes highlight the need to integrate process improvement efforts. This need is at the root of CMMI constellation. Keywords: CMMI; capability models; process capability; process improvement; software development; software engineering institute (SEI); appraisals; process management