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Unit 2: A Generic View of Process

for the project management (i.e., the people executing the management process) to get precise Notes
information about the development process, without being directly involved in the development
process or without going through the details of all activities of a phase.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
4. Major software development organizations typically have many processes
executing………………………..

5. A software project, on the other hand, is a ………………………… project in which a software
process is used.
6. Software is conceived, born, developed, put into operation, maintained during
……………………….. and ultimately dies giving way to another software.
7. Predictability of a process determines how ……………………… the outcome of a process.

2.3 Capability Maturity Model

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a methodology used to develop and refine an
organization’s software development process. The model describes a five-level evolutionary
path of increasingly organized and systematically more mature processes. CMM was developed
and is promoted by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a research and development center
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). SEI was founded in 1984 to address software
engineering issues and, in a broad sense, to advance software engineering methodologies. More
specifically, SEI was established to optimize the process of developing, acquiring, and maintaining
heavily software-reliant systems for the DoD. Because the processes involved are equally
applicable to the software industry as a whole, SEI advocates industry-wide adoption of the
CMM.

Purpose of the CMM

The CMM is a framework that describes the key elements of an effective process. It provides a
foundation for process improvement. The CMM describes an evolutionary improvement path
from an ad hoc, immature process to a mature, disciplined process. The process below describes
the CMM. It shows the five levels of progressive process maturity (Initial, Repeatable, Defined,
Managed, and Optimizing), and indicates the Process Areas (PA) that are addressed at each level.
The CMM covers practices for planning, engineering, and managing development and
maintenance activities. When followed, these key practices improve the ability of organizations
to meet goals for cost, schedule, functionality, and product quality. The goal is to improve
efficiency, return on investment, and effectiveness.
The CMM establishes a yardstick against which it is possible to judge, in a repeatable way, the
maturity of an organization’s process and compare it to the state of the practice of the industry.
The CMM is also used extensively by organizations to identify process improvement needs, to
plan and prioritize improvements, and to evaluate improvement progress.
The CMM has become a de facto industry standard for assessing and improving processes.
Through the CMM, the SEI and community have put in place an effective means for modeling,
defining, and measuring the maturity of the processes used by process engineering and
development professionals. The CMM has been widely adopted and used by the U.S. Government,
industry, and academia.

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