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'Capability Maturity Model® Integration' ('CMMI®') is a process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes.
^[1]
The latest release of CMMI--CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV), Version 1.2--was released in August 2006. CMMI for Development addressees product and service development processes.
Another release of CMMI--CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ), Version 1.2--will be released in November 2007. CMMI for Acquisition addresses acquisition and outsourcing processes in government and industry.
CMMI for Development Version 1.2 consists of 22 process areas with capability or maturity levels. CMMI was created and is maintained by a team consisting of members from industry, government, and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and is available for download from the SEI.
CMMI should be adapted to each individual organization according to its business objectives, Organizations cannot be CMMI "certified." Instead, an organization is appraised (e.g., using an appraisal method like SCAMPI) and is awarded a 1-5 level rating. The rating results of such an appraisal can be published if released by the appraised organization.^[2]

Contents

Process Areas

History

Appraisal

Benefits

Structure

References

Footnotes

See also

External links

Process Areas

The CMMI v1.2 contains 22 process areas:

★ Causal Analysis and Resolution
★ Configuration Management
★ Decision Analysis and Resolution
★ Integrated Project Management
★ Measurement and Analysis
★ Organizational Innovation and Deployment
★ Organizational Process Definition
★ Organizational Process Focus
★ Organizational Process Performance
★ Organizational Training
★ Product Integration
★ Project Monitoring and Control
★ CMMI Project Planning
★ Process and Product Quality Assurance
★ Quantitative Project Management
★ Requirements Development
★ Requirements Management
★ Risk Management
★ Supplier Agreement Management
★ Technical Solution
★ Validation
★ Verification

History

CMMI is the successor of the CMM. The CMM was developed from 1987 until 1997. In 2002, CMMI Version 1.1 was released. Version 1.2 followed in August 2006. The goal of the CMMI project is to improve the usability of maturity models by integrating many different models into one framework. It was created by members of industry, government and the SEI. The main sponsors included the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the National Defense Industrial Association

Appraisal

There are three different Classes of appraisals. They are Class A, B, and C. In the Appraisal Requirements for CMMI (ARC) document, the requirements for CMMI appraisal methods are described.^[3]
The Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI) is an appraisal method that meets all of the ARC requirements. There are three Classes of SCAMPI appraisals Class A, B, C.^[4]
The Class A appraisal is more formal and is the only one that can result in a level rating. The results of an appraisal may be published (if the appraised organization approves) on the SEI Web site of the SEI: Published SCAMPI Appraisal Results. SCAMPI also supports the conduct of ISO/IEC 15504, also known as SPICE (Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination), assessments etc.

Benefits

The SEI states that 60 organizations measured increases of performance in the categories of cost, schedule, productivity, quality and customer satisfaction.^[5] The median increase in performance varied between 14% (customer satisfaction) and 62% (productivity). However, the CMMI model mostly deals with ''what'' processes should be implemented, and not so much with ''how'' they can be implemented. SEI thus also mentions that these results do not guarantee that applying CMMI will increase performance in every organization. A small company with few resources may be less likely to benefit from CMMI; this view is supported by the Process Maturity Profile (page 10). Of the small organizations (<25 employees) 70.5% is assessed at level 2: Managed, while 52.8% of the organizations with 1001–2000 employees are rated at the highest level (5: Optimizing).
Interestingly, Turner & Jain (2002) argue that although it is obvious there are large differences between CMMI and agile methods, both approaches have much in common. They believe neither way is the 'right' way to develop software, but that there are phases in a project where one of the two is better suited. They suggest one should combine the different fragments of the methods into a new hybrid method. Other viewpoints about using CMMI and Agile development are available on the SEI Web site.
The combination of the project management technique Earned value management (EVM) with CMMI has been described (Solomon, 2002). To conclude with a similar use of CMMI, Extreme Programming (XP), a software engineering method, has been evaluated with CMM/CMMI (Nawrocki et al., 2002). For example, the XP requirements management approach, (which relies on oral communication), was evaluated as not compliant with CMMI.

Structure

CMMI comes with two different representations--staged and continuous. The staged representation, which groups process areas into five ''maturity'' levels, was also used in the ancestor Software CMM. The continuous representation, which was used in the ancestor EIA 731, defines ''capability'' levels. The differences in the representations are solely organizational; the content is equivalent. Both can be used to achieve level ratings because of Equivalent Staging.
CMMI models use a common structure to describe process areas (PAs). A process area has 1 to 4 ''goals'', and each goal is comprised of ''practices''. These goals and practices are called ''specific'' goals and practices, as they describe activities that are specific to a single process area. An additional set of goals and practices applies across all of the process areas; this set is called ''generic'' goals and practices. Table 1 describes CMMI terminology in more detail.

Table 1: CMMI Concept Definition List

Concept	Definition
AMPLIFICATION	Amplifications are informative model components that contain information relevant to a particular discipline. For example, to find an amplification for software engineering, you would look in the model for items labeled “For Software Engineering.” The same is true for other disciplines.
CAPABILITY LEVEL	Achievement of process improvement within an individual process area. A capability level is defined by the appropriate specific and generic practices for a process area.
CMMI MODEL	One from the entire collection of possible models that can be generated from the CMMI Framework. Since the CMMI Framework can generate different models based on the needs of the organization using it, there are multiple CMMI models.
CONTINUOUS REPRESENTATION	A capability maturity model structure wherein capability levels provide a recommended order for approaching process improvement within each specified process area.
GENERIC GOAL	A required model component that describes the characteristics that must be present to institutionalize the processes that implement a process area.
GENERIC PRACTICE	An expected model component that is considered important in achieving the associated generic goal. The generic practices associated with a generic goal describe the activities that are expected to result in achievement of the generic goal and contribute to the institutionalization of the processes associated with a process area.
GENERIC PRACTICE ELABORATIONS	An informative model component that appears after a generic practice to provide guidance on how the generic practice should be applied to the process area.
GOAL	A required CMMI component that can be either a generic goal or a specific goal. When you see the word goal in a CMMI model, it always refers to a model component (e.g., generic goal and specific goal).
MATURITY LEVEL	Degree of process improvement across a predefined set of process areas in which all goals in the set are attained.
PROCESS AREA	A cluster of related practices in an area that, when implemented collectively, satisfy a set of goals considered important for making improvement in that area. All CMMI process areas are common to both continuous and staged representations.
REFERENCE	An informative model component that points to additional or more detailed information in related process areas.
SPECIFIC GOAL	A required model component that describes the unique characteristics that must be present to satisfy the process area.
SPECIFIC PRACTICE	An expected model component that is considered important in achieving the associated specific goal. The specific practices describe the activities expected to result in achievement of the specific goals of a process area.
STAGED REPRESENTATION	A model structure wherein attaining the goals of a set of process areas establishes a maturity level; each level builds a foundation for subsequent levels.
SUBPRACTICE	An informative model component that provides guidance for interpreting and implementing specific or generic practices. Subpractices may be worded as if prescriptive, but are actually meant only to provide ideas that may be useful for process improvement.
WORK PRODUCT	In the CMMI Product Suite, a useful result of a process. This can include files, documents, products, parts of a product, services, process descriptions, specifications, and invoices. A key distinction between a work product and a product component is that a work product is not necessarily part of the end product.

'Published Results of Appraisals'
For the latest published CMMI appraisal results see the SEI Web site.

References

'Books and journals'

★ CMMI: Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement (2nd Edition), , Mary Beth, Chrissis, Addison-Wesley Professional, , ISBN 0321279670

★ Interpreting the CMMI : A Process Improvement Approach, , Margaret K., Kulpa, Auerbach Publications, , ISBN 0-8493-1654-5

★ CMMI SCAMPI Distilled: Appraisals for Process Improvement, , Dennis M., Ahern, Addison-Wesley Professional, , ISBN 0-8493-1654-5

★ CMMI Distilled: A Practical Introduction to Integrated Process Improvement, , Dennis M., Ahern, Addison-Wesley Professional, , ISBN 0-8493-1654-5

★ Agile Meets CMMI: Culture Clash or Common Cause?, Turner, R. & Jain. A., , , Extreme Programming and Agile Methods – XP/Agile Universe 2002, 2002

★ Extreme Programming Modified: Embrace Requirements Engineering Practices, Nawrocki, J.R., Jasinski, M., Walter, B., Wojciechowski, A., , , Proceedings of the IEEE Joint International Conference on Requirements Engineering, 2002
'Websites'
;''SEI web pages''
:
★ CMMI Model Download
:
★ History of CMMI
:
★ SEI Partner List
;''SEI reports''
:
★ CMMI for Development, Version 1.2
:
★ Process Maturity Profile (March 2007)
:
★ Appraisal Requirements for CMMI, Version 1.2 (ARC, V1.2)
:
★ Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI) A Versiions 1.2: Method Definition Document
:
★ Understanding and Leveraging a Supplier's CMMI Efforts: A Guidebook for Acquirers
;''Other web pages''
:
★ A thorough, independent CMMI FAQ

Footnotes

1.
What is CMMI®?

2. SCAMPI Appraisal Results

3.
Appraisal Requirements for CMMI®, Version 1.2

4. SCAMPI Appraisal Results

5. CMMI® Performance Results, 2005

See also

★ Capability Maturity Model

★ Process area (CMMI)

★ The SPICE project

★ Process improvement

★ Software Engineering Institute

External links

'CMMI Model'

★ Online CMMI Browser

★ A tabulated and annotated version of CMMi for Software Development is presented here

★ mini CMMI-survey A free CMMI questionnaire for Project Managers

★ CMMI in Turkish CMMI in Turkish
'Examples'
Some recent examples of published SCAMPI appraisal results are listed below. The complete list of published SCAMPI appraisal results can be viewed here: SCAMPI Appraisal Results.
#HermeSoftware Technology Inc. Staged Maturity Level 2, in the discipline SE/SW (12/14/2005)
#Zhejiang Hongcheng Computer System Co., Ltd. Staged Maturity Level 2, in the discipline SE/SW (12/10/2005)
#LG Electronics Staged Maturity Level 3, in the discipline SE/SW (12/2/2005)
#Toshiba Solutions Corporation Staged Maturity Level 3, in the discipline SE/SW (12/1/2005)
#Thomas and Herbert Consulting, LLC Staged Maturity Level 3, in the discipline SE/SW (12/1/2005)
#Ci&T Software S.A. Staged Maturity Level 5, in the discipline SE/SW (April 13, 2007)
# Interpreting Capability Maturity Model® Integration (CMMI®) for Service Organizations - a Systems Engineering and Integration Services Example (An example of how one should interpret the CMMI for a specific type of organization)
'Organizations'

★ SEI Software Engineering Institute

★ ESPI Foundation European SEPG

★ NDIA National Defense Industrial Association