Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)

Question 1

The CMMI Model

Answer 1

• Intended to cover product and service development and maintenance
• Extensible framework so that new bodies of knowledge can be added
• 2 Instantiations:
  
  • Staged (Where the model is expressed in terms of maturity levels)
  • Continuous (Where a capability rating is computed)
• Covers multiple disciplines and multiple life-cycle phases
  
  • Process Management
  • Project Management
  • Engineering
  • Support

Question 2

The staged CMMI Model

Answer 2

• Enables organizations to have a predefined and proven path for improvement
• Focuses on a set of processes that are key to improve on the organizational maturity level
• Often used during acquisitions as a means to qualify bidders
• Summaraized process improvement results in a simple form: maturity level
• Builds on a long history of use that includes case studies and data that demonstrates prove ROI.
• Provides an easy migration of the software development from CMM to CMMI

Question 3

The continuous CMMI Model

Answer 3

• A fine-grained model that considers individual groups of practices and assess their use.
• Maturity assessment is not a single value, but a set of values showing the organizations maturity in each area.
• Rates each selected process from 0 - 5.
• Allows you to select the order of improvement that best meets the organization’s business objectives and mitigates the organization’s area of risk.
• Enables comparisions across organizations on a process area by process area basis or by comparing results through the use of equivalent staging.

Question 4

Continuous vs. Staged

Answer 4

Continuous:

• Explicit freedom to select the order of improvement that best meets the organization’s business objectives and mitigates areas of risk.
• Enables increased visibility of the capability achieved in each individual process area.
• Allows improvements of different processes to be performed at different rates.
• Reflects a newer approach that does not yet have the data to demonstrate its ties to return on investment.

Staged:

• Predefined and proven improvement path.
• Focuses on a set of processes that provide an organzation with a specific capability that is characterized by each maturity
• Summarizes process improvement results in a simple form - a single maturity level number.
• Builds on a relatively long history of use that includes case studies and data that demonstrate return on investment.

Question 5

Decision analysis and resolution

Answer 5

• Decisions are key friver for business success.
• Bad decisions result in bad results
• Good decisions are based on:
  
  • Good information/data
  • Proven and followed processes
  • Sound methodology