Capability Maturity Model Integration

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes. CMMI best practices are published in documents called models, which each address a different area of interest. There are now two areas of interest covered by CMMI models: Development and Acquisition.

The current release of CMMI is Version 1.2. There are three version 1.2 models now available:

• CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV), Version 1.2 was released in August 2006. It addresses product and service development processes.
• CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ), Version 1.2 was released in November 2007. It addresses supply chain management, acquisition, and outsourcing processes in government and industry.
• CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC), will be included in next release (January 2009). It addresses guidance for delivering services within organization and to external customers.

Regardless of which model an organization chooses, CMMI best practices 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.

Process Areas

CMMI v1.2(CMMI-DEV) model contains the following 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
• Project Monitoring and Control
• Project Planning
• Process and Product Quality Assurance
• Product Integration
• Quantitative Project Management
• Requirements Management
• Requirements Development
• Risk Management
• Supplier Agreement Management
• Technical Solution
• Validation
• Verification

History

CMMI is the successor of the CMM or Software 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 Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI). The main sponsors included the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the National Defense Industrial Association.

What product domains is CMMI now relevant to? Though its roots are in a scheme for software engineering, CMMI is highly generalised to embrace other kinds of product, such as the mass manufacture of electronic components. The word software does not appear in definitions of CMMI. This unification of hardware and software engineering makes CMMI extremely abstract. It is not as specific to software engineering as CMMM. Yet its usage outside of that domain appears limited.

Appraisal

Many organizations find value in measuring their progress by conducting an appraisal and earning a maturity level rating or a capability level achievement profile. These types of appraisals are typically conducted for one or more of the following reasons:

• To determine how well the organization’s processes compare to CMMI best practices and identify areas where improvement can be made
• To inform external customers and suppliers about how well the organization’s processes compare to CMMI best practices
• To meet the contractual requirements of one or more customers

Appraisals of organizations using a CMMI model must conform to the requirements defined in the Appraisal Requirements for CMMI (ARC) document. Appraisals focus on identifying improvement opportunities and comparing the organization’s processes to CMMI best practices. Appraisal teams use a CMMI model and ARC-conformant appraisal method to guide their evaluation of the organization and their reporting of conclusions. The appraisal results are used (e.g., by a process group) to plan improvements for the organization.

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.

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.

A Class A appraisal is more formal and is the only one that can result in a level rating. Results of an appraisal may be published (if the appraised organization approves) on the CMMI 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 published that 60 organizations measured increases of performance in the categories of cost, schedule, productivity, quality and customer satisfaction. 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. 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% are 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. Sutherland et al (2007) assert that a combination of Scrum and CMMI brings more adaptability and predictability than either one alone. David J. Anderson (2005) gives hints on how to interpret CMMI in an agile manner. 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.

CMMI can be appraised using two different approaches: staged and continuous. The staged approach yields appraisal results as one of five maturity levels. The continuous approach yields one of six capability levels. The differences in these approaches are felt only in the appraisal; the best practices are equivalent and result in equivalent process improvement results.

CMMI Concepts

All CMMI models contain multiple process areas (PAs). A PA 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, one 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	A model generated from the CMMI Framework.
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 characteristics that must be present to institutionalize 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. The word goal in a CMMI model 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, satisfies 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 they 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.

Conferences

• CMMI made Practical CMMI made Practical
• SEPG SEPG
• SEPG Europe SEPG Europe (ESEPG)