Abstract
The Software Engineering Institute developed the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in the early 1990s as a framework to help software organizations improve their software process maturity. The CMMI is the successor to the older CMM, and its implementation brings best practice in software and systems engineering into the organization. The SEI and many other quality experts believe that there is a close relationship between the maturity of software processes and the quality of the delivered software product.
The CMMI consists of five maturity levels with each maturity level (except level 1) consisting of a number of process areas. Each process area consists of a set of goals, and these must be implemented by a set of related practices in order for the process area to be satisfied. The practices specify what is to be done rather than how it should be done.
Processes are activities associated with carrying out certain tasks, and they need to be defined and documented. The users of the process need to receive appropriate training to enable them to carry out the process, and process discipline need to be enforced by independent audits. Process performance needs to be monitored and improvements made to ineffective processes.
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Notes
- 1.
The SEI was founded by the US Congress in 1984 and has worked successfully in advancing software engineering practices in the US and worldwide. It performs research to find solutions to key software engineering problems, and its proposed solutions are validated through pilots. These solutions are then disseminated to the wider software engineering community through its training programme. The SEI’s research and maturity models have played an important role in helping companies to deliver high-quality software consistently on time and on budget. The SEI opened a European office in Frankfurt, Germany in 2004.
- 2.
Of course, the fact that a company has been appraised at a certain CMM or CMMI rating is no guarantee that it is performing effectively as a commercial organization. For example, the Motorola plant in India was appraised at CMM level 5 in the late 1990s while Motorola lost business opportunities in the GSM market.
- 3.
ISO 15504 (popularly known as SPICE) is an international standard for software process assessment.
- 4.
Our focus is on the implementation of the staged representation of the CMMI rather than the continuous representation. This is my preferred approach to process improvement as it provides a clearly defined roadmap, and also allows benchmarking of organizations. Appraisals against the staged representation are useful since a CMMI maturity level rating is awarded to the organization, and the company may use this to publicise its software engineering capability.
- 5.
Discipline amplification is a specialised piece of information that is relevant to a particular discipline. It is introduced in the model by text such as “For Systems Engineering”
- 6.
A SCAMPI appraisal is a systematic examination of the processes in an organization to determine the maturity of the organization with respect to the CMMI. An appraisal team consists of a SCAMPI lead appraiser, one or more external appraisers, and usually one internal appraiser. It consists of interviews with senior and middle management and reviews with project managers and project teams. The appraisers will review documentation and determine the extent to which the processes defined are effective as well as the extent to which they are institutionalized in the organization. Data will be gathered and reviewed by the appraisers, ratings produced and the findings presented to the organization.
- 7.
Small organizations may not have the budget for a formal SCAMPI Class A appraisal. They may be more interested in an independent SCAMPI Class B or C appraisal, which is used to provide feedback on their strengths and opportunities for improvement. Feedback allows the organization to focus its improvement efforts for the next improvement cycle.
- 8.
Institutionalization is a technical term and means that the process is ingrained in the way in which work is performed in the organization. An institutionalised process is defined, documented and followed in the organization. All employees have been appropriately trained in its use and process discipline is enforced via audits. It is illustrated by the phrase “That’s the way we do things around here”.
References
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O’Regan, G. (2014). Capability Maturity Model Integration. In: Introduction to Software Quality. Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06106-1_13
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