Overview of SEI-CMM

Levels of Maturity:
The CMM suggests five levels of maturity of the company process. The maturity level of a
company indicates the effectiveness of company's software development practices.
Maturity level 1 is the lowest one and at this level, the practices of the company are vague
and does not provide stable environment for developing and maintaining the software.
Maturity level 5 is the highest and at this level the company is said to be at the optimizing
level and has practices to develop and maintain software efficiently. The five levels are
briefly described below and is pictorially represented in Fig 1.
Level 1: Initial Level
At this level, the organization does not have any defined process and the development
activities are chaotic. The success and repeatability depends on the individual/team but
there is no structured help from the organization.

Level 2: Repeatable Level
At the Repeatable Level, policies for managing a software project and procedures to
implement those policies are established. Planning and managing new projects is
based on experience with similar projects. Process capability is enhanced by establishing
basic process management discipline on a project by project basis. An effective
process can be characterized as one which is practiced, documented, enforced, trained,
measured, and able to improve.

Level 3: Defined Level
At the Defined Level, the standard process for developing and maintaining software
across the organization is documented, including both software engineering and
management processes, and these processes are integrated into a coherent whole.
This standard process is referred to throughout the CMM as the organization's standard
software process. Processes established at Level 3 are used (and changed, as
appropriate) to help the software managers and technical staff perform more effectively.

Level 4: Managed Level
At the Managed Level, the organization sets quantitative quality goals for both software
products and processes. Productivity and quality are measured for important software
process activities across all projects as part of an organizational measurement program.
An organization-wide software process database is used to collect and analyze the data
available from the projects' defined software processes. Software processes are
instrumented with well-defined and consistent measurements at Level 4. These measurements
establish the quantitative foundation for evaluating the projects' software
processes and products.

Level 5: Optimizing
At the Optimizing Level, the entire organization is focused on continuous process
improvement. The organization has the means to identify weaknesses and strengthen
the process proactively, with the goal of preventing the occurrence of defects. Data on the
effectiveness of the software process is used to perform cost benefit analyses of new
technologies and proposed changes to the organization's software process. Innovations
that exploit the best software engineering practices are identified and transferred
throughout the organization.

Advantages of using CMM
By properly implementing the CMM recommendations, organizations will have the
following advantages and gains, but not just limited to them.
1. Mature development procedures
2. Better Risk Management and mitigation plans
3. Better defect prevention mechanism
4. High visibility on deliverable quality with minimum overheads
5. Better estimations based on available metrics
6. Better documentation at each stage
7. Better Team Management with clear roles and responsibilities
8. Organizations focus on continuous process improvement
9. Identification of process weakness and effort to rectify them