Capability Maturity Model
Integration (CMMI)
COMP 587 - Group Assignment #1
Ario Nejad, Davit Stepanyan, Ian Jackman, Sebastian Henneberg, Wan Chi
Chio
Goals of CMMI
• To improve software-development processes
• To evaluate capability of a software company
Background
• In early 1960's, many companies saw a
potential in software development and
started developing software without any
proper techniques or standards
• This resulted in "Software Crisis" - US
military had several software projects
extended or canceled in 1980's .
• US Air force then started a study to
understand and monitor the issue at the
Software Engineering Institute (SEI).
Software Engineering Institute (SEI)
• A federally funded research and
development center operated by Carnegie
Mellon University
• Mainly sponsored by the U.S. Department of
Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense
(OSD) and the National Defense Industrial
Association
• Developed CMMI with "a group of experts
from industry, government"1
Timeline of CMMI
• CMMI is the successor of the capability
maturity model (CMM)
• CMM was developed from 1987 until 1997
as a solution to avoid Software Crisis.
• CMMI Version 1.1 was released in 2002.
CMMI Version 1.2 followed in August 2006,
and CMMI Version 1.3 in November 2010
Who can use CMMI to improve
quality?
• “CMMI applies to teams, work groups,
projects, divisions, and entire organizations”2
• CMMI is widely adopted in a variety of
industries, “including electronics, health
services, finance, insurance, and
transportation. User companies include
Boeing, General Motors, JP Morgan, Bosch,
and many others [...]”3
2. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/
3. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/why/index.cfm
CMMI Features
• CMMI Product Suite - a collection of all
model components, training material
components, and appraisal components.
• organized in 3 main areas of interest called
constellations/models:
o CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV)
Addresses the development of product and
service systems.
Used by organizations in Defense, Healthcare,
Finance, Insurance, Telecommunications, and
other Industries.
CMMI Features (Cont.)
o CMMI for Acquisition ( CMMI-ACQ)
Designed to aid organizations which are
acquiring products and services or outsourcing
the development of delivery of products and
services.
o CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC)
Purposed for organizations to get the same
results and benefits in their service deployment
efforts that they currently enjoy in their
development effort.
CMMI Features -
Constellations/Models
• CMMI contains 22 process areas across the
3 constellations. 16 of them are considered
as core and found in all constellations
• Each can be represented in one of two
ways: continuous or staged
o Continuous
Designed to allow user to focus on specific
processes that are considered important for the
organizations immediate business objectives.
Measures an organization’s achievement with a
single process area of multiple selected
processes
CMMI Features -
Constellations/Models (Conti.)
o Staged
Provides a sequence of improvements
Measure the process improvement achievement
across multiple pre-planned process areas
CMMI Features - Appraisal Methods
• Capability Levels (CL)
o adopted for appraising continuous representation
o totally 4 levels (0-Incomplete, 1-Performed, 2-
Managed and 3-Defined) 4
• Maturity Levels (ML)
o adopted for appraising staged representation
o totally 5 levels, numbered 1 through 5
• Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process
Improvement (SCAMPI)
o three classes of appraisals: A, B, C.
o A is the most rigorous and the only one that can
result in a level rating.
4. www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/10tr032.pdf
Relationships with Other
Approaches
• “[...] is compatible with Agile, Scrum, ITIL,
Six Sigma, COBIT, ISO 9000, RUP, and
Lean. In fact, CMMI’s relationships with
these standards, methods, and technologies
goes beyond compatibility. They
complement each other [...]”5
5.http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/compatibility/index.cfm
Thoughts on CMMI
• CMMI allows an organization to measure
how compliant its supplier and itself perform
in quality assurance process as a whole
based on the defined standard. This
definitely increases the confidence level of
the customers in the final product.
• An organization can achieve bigger
improvements without introducing a lot of
additional cost, as CMMI is compatible with
other approaches in terms of process areas,
e.g. Agile.
