History of the CMMI

Here is a very short history of the CMMI ” short because most readers of this book will already know this and because other sources can give you much more detail.

People were successfully using the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), which was designed for improving software processes and measuring the maturity of software processes in an organization. This success brought more and more attention to model-based process improvement in other areas and resulted in a number of other models being developed, including the:

• Systems Engineering CMM (SE-CMM)

• Software Acquisition Capability Maturity Model (SA-CMM)

• Integrated Product Development Team Model (IPD-CMM)

• System Engineering Capability Assessment Model (SECAM)

• Systems Engineering Capability Model (SECM)

Exhibit 1 shows the relative timeline for the primary models directly influencing the CMMI. It may be of interest to note that, as shown, the SECM is actually an integrated model in its own right; that is, an integration of two systems engineering models (the SE-CMM and SECAM) as shown by the two arrows coming into SECM. CMMI was most directly influenced by CMM v2.0c for software, SECM for systems engineering, SA-CMM for acquisition, and supplier sourcing and IPD-CMM for integrated teaming.

Exhibit 1: Models Directly Influencing CMMI.

 

Some organizations that wanted to use this collection of models were confused because each model was slightly different. The new model ” CMMI ” is designed to integrate the plethora of models created throughout the years by the SEI and other organizations. The idea of reconciling these models with other methodologies and standards ” ISO 9001, 15504, among others ” was advanced. Several adopters of the SEI's software process improvement mantra, including the Department of Defense (DoD), requested a halt to the generation of more models and, instead, recommended that the SEI integrate the concepts expressed in these disparate models into one model. Hence, the journey toward CMMI began .

Some readers will take us to task for starting our history with the CMM for Software. They will be right to say that the CMM is based on years and years of quality and process improvement performed by many great and wonderful people. Because we do not think that merely mentioning Walter Shewart, W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Philip Crosby helps the reader understand the CMMI, we have left them out of our history, but clearly the CMMI would not be here without their significant contributions in this area.