CMM And Its Benefits

Contributed by: Ilyas Khan

What is CMM?

CMM (Capability Maturity Model) is a model that represents process maturity for software development.

It was developed by Software Engineering Institute (SEI) with help of the Mitre Corporation in response to U.S. Federal Government’s request to develop a method for assessing the capability of its software contractors. Many software contractors were completing their projects with marked schedule and budget slippages. Developing this model became necessary so that the abilities of software contractors to manage large projects could be evaluated before awarding contract.

Understanding CMM

The CMM is the fundamental concept useful in understanding the path to improvement of processes related to application development. Any application development organization can improve its software processes on the basis of this model. The model assists by guiding to take small do-able steps and provides a framework for taking the steps outlined in its five maturity levels. Each of these five steps makes a foundation for entering into the next level.

Characteristics of Maturity Levels

The characteristics of the level of maturity of the software development processes for any organization can be assessed at one of five levels:

Initial. Few processes are defined and success depends on the individual effort.
Repeatable. Project management processes exist and projects are tracked for cost, schedule and functionality.
Defined. The processes for management and development are documented and are integrated as a standard practice of the organization.
Managed. Measurements of both the process and the product quality are collected, understood and controlled.
Optimizing. Established processes are improved upon by collecting feedback.

Operational Uses Of The CMM

The CMM as a framework represents a path of improvement recommended for application development organizations that want to increase their software process capability. It is designed to support at least one of the following four operational uses:

• Assessment teams can identify strengths and weaknesses in the organization
• Evaluation teams can identify the risks of selecting from among different contractors for awarding business and to monitor contracts
• Managers and staff can understand the activities necessary to plan and implement software process improvement for their organization (most software organizations fall here)
• Process improvement groups can use it as a guide to help them define and improve the software process in their organization

Benefits of CMM

In a study released by Gartner states the benefits gained by organizations that implemented software process improvement programs guided by CMM resulted in increased “productivity, quality, time to delivery, accuracy of cost and schedule estimates as well as product quality.” It also stated that progressing to the next level in the CMM the improvement increased because different problems were addressed at each maturity level leading to different benefits.

Some of the organizations that participated in the study reported that “when their processes were immature, between 30 and 50 percent of the development time was spent on rework.” And that frequently the “managers committed to schedules that could not be achieved without heroic effort” and often resulted in a rushed meeting of deadlines. As a consequence, mistakes remained undetected during development. When the applications were tested, defects emerged which overwhelmed the project.

Those Companies that achieved CMM Level 2 could commit to attainable delivery dates and avoid the Level 1 late nights and weekends. Furthermore, since project managers monitored actual progress against planned schedules, they could detect slippages earlier when it was still possible to take corrective action.

Level 3 organizations used “historical measures describing the performance of their application development process as the basis for their estimations.” As they gained experience with their own development process, they gained “understanding of interaction among schedule, effort and functionality.”

Level 4 and level 5 or high-maturity organizations had “the ability to target specific problems, identify root causes and make improvements with predictable efforts.”

®Capability Maturity Model and CMM® are registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

References:
www.estyle.com
www.sei.cmu.edu
www.gartner.com