Page 201 - SOFTWARE TESTING & QUALITY ASSURANCE

Software Testing and Quality Assurance

14.1 CMM (Capability Maturity Model)

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a standard model used for depicting and measuring the
maturity of a software company’s development process. CMM model also provides guidance on how
companies can improvise their software quality. It was developed by the software development
community along with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and Carnegie Mellon University under
the direction of United States Department of Defense. CMM is unique in its manner because it is
incremental in nature and can fit into any class of a software company, ranging from a startup company
to a well-established company.
CMM defines five-level steps for process mapping and implementation. These steps represent a model
which explains the process maturity of an organization and analyzes the current state of process
maturity of an organization. Organizations make use of these steps to assess their maturity levels before
skipping onto another level. This flexibility to slowly strive towards high process maturity helps the
organizations to easily adopt to process related changes. They can go from first level to fifth level over a
period of time, and need to go from one level to another. This implies that they cannot skip any level.
The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is basically meant for software development organizations. It
caters to the field of software engineering, system engineering, project management, software
maintenance, risk management, system acquisition, information technology (IT), and personnel
management.

Did you know? It has been estimated that since 1987, the number of companies using CMM to assess
their software management practices has doubled every five years.

CMM is a widely used and preferred software method of evaluation. It involves development of
software operating measures, which are developed in five step quality conditions ranging from CMM1
to CMM5. CMM contains various levels and structures. Let us first understand the structure and
components of CMM and then get more details on the five levels.

A Maturity Model:
1. Is a combination of structured levels that showcases how efficiently processes,
practices, and behavior can produce the desired outcomes.
2. Can be utilized as a model for evaluation and as a guide for analysis.

CMM Structure and Components
Figure 14.1 illustrates the structure of CMM. Let us understand how the CMM components are
interwoven in its structure. CMM has maturity levels that indicate the process capability at any point of
time. These maturity levels contain process areas. Each level has different process areas. These process
areas have some goals to achieve and are made up of common features or characteristics. These
common features are meant to address implementation or institutionalization aspects of process
improvement. The common features contain some key practices which are followed as a main guideline
for process improvement.

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