Evolution of CMMI
Since 1991, CMMs have been developed for a myriad of disciplines. Some of the most notable include models for systems engineering, software engineering, software acquisition, workforce management and development, and integrated product and process development.
Although these models have proved useful to many organizations, the use of multiple models has been problematic. Many organizations would like to focus their improvement efforts across the disciplines in their organizations. However, the differences among these discipline-specific models, including their architecture, content, and approach, have limited these organizations’ ability to focus their improvements successfully. Further, applying multiple models that are not integrated within and across an organization is costly in terms of training, appraisals, and improvement activities.
The CMM Integration project was formed to sort out the problem of using multiple CMMs. The CMMI Product Team’s mission was to combine three source models:
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The Capability Maturity Model for Software (SW-CMM) v2.0 draft C
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The Systems Engineering Capability Model (SECM)
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The Integrated Product Development Capability Maturity Model (IPD-CMM) v 0.98
The combination of these models into a single improvement framework was intended for use by organizations in their pursuit of enterprise-wide process improvement.
These three source models were selected because of their widespread adoption in the software and systems engineering communities and because of their different approaches to improving processes in an organization.
Using information from these popular and well-regarded models as source material, the CMMI Product Team created a cohesive set of integrated models that can be adopted by those currently using the source models, as well as by those new to the CMM concept. Hence, CMMI is a result of the evolution of the SW-CMM, the SECM, and the IPD-CMM.