What is CMM?
Based on concepts developed by Crosby, Deming, Juran and Humphrey, it was launched in 1987 the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie-Mellon University and has become a powerful market influence in the software sector. The CMM-SWsm is built around the key concept of maturity levels with start with Level 1, the Initial Level and progress up to Level 5, the Optimizing Level. Each level builds on the previous one in a structured way to progress the organisation from a reactionary state dependent upon ‘heroes’ to a predictable and controlled environment that is continually self-improving. There are a set of Key Process Areas and their related activities for each level and an organisation uses these requirements as part of it’s own Software Process Improvement (SPI) programme e.g. to establish processes and to assess their effectiveness
