Chapter 1. Introduction

More now than ever, companies today want to deliver products better, faster, and cheaper. At the same time, in the high-technology environment of the twenty-first century, nearly all organizations have found themselves building more and more complex products. Today, a single company usually does not develop all the components that compose a product. More commonly, some components are built in-house and some are acquired; then all the components are integrated into the final product. Organizations must be able to manage and control this complex product development and maintenance.

Many organizations have also found themselves in the software business. Organizations that were not typically software companies such as financial institutions, car manufacturers, airplane manufacturers, and insurance companies find that much of their business relies on software. Software is often what differentiates them from their competitors. The problems these organizations address today involve both software and systems engineering. More and more, these disciplines are becoming a critical part of their business. In essence, these organizations are product developers that need a way to manage an integrated approach to their software and systems engineering as part of reaching their business objectives.

In the current marketplace, there are maturity models, standards, methodologies, and guidelines that can help an organization improve the way it does business. However, most available improvement approaches focus on a specific part of the business and do not take a systemic approach to the problems that most organizations are facing. For example, there are many maturity models available such as the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI's) Capability Maturity Model^® for Software (SW-CMM^®), which focuses on improving software, and the Electronic Industries Alliance's (EIA's) Systems Engineering Capability Model (SECM), which focuses on systems engineering. By focusing on improving one area of a business, these models have unfortunately perpetuated the stovepipes and barriers that exist in organizations.

Capability Maturity Model^® Integration (CMMI^®) provides an opportunity to avoid or eliminate these stovepipes and barriers through integrated models that transcend disciplines. CMMI consists of best practices that address product development and maintenance. It addresses practices that cover the product's life cycle from conception through delivery and maintenance. There is an emphasis on both systems engineering and software engineering and the integration necessary to build and maintain the total product.