ASSE 2002 - Argentine Symposium in Software Engineering

Santa Fe, Argentina
September 9 - 13, 2002

Castellano

CMMI, is it a new model or is th CMM evolution?

Alvaro Ruiz de Mendarozqueta
Quality Manager
MACS (Motorola Argentina Center for Software)
GSG (Global Software Group)

The CMM is one of the most successful quality models of the last decade, the most widely known version is the CMM 1.1 and it is in use since the early nineties.
There were a lot of discussions about pros and cons of the model but the companies that adopted it can show results of their success in productivity, quality and cycle time.

On the one hand, many research studies demonstrate that projects that are in serious trouble have problems that are addressed by the CMM, especially in the basic areas of the level 2 and level 3 of the model. On the other hand, there are many areas and practices that the CMM doesn’t cover and some issues, like the ones related to metrics, are ambiguously addressed in the model.

Other impact is the increasing number of models that are closely related to the CMM that covers other areas of interests. Those areas are needed in nowadays projects that integrates many other aspects and disciplines. The use of this variety of models has a lot of problems: different structures, formats, terms, and ways of measuring maturity; hard to integrate them in a combined improvement program; hard to use multiple models in supplier selection.

The CMMI as a solution, integrates the systems and software disciplines (and others) into one process improvement framework; develop the framework which allows for the introduction of new disciplines as needs arise and leverage off of the success and history behind existing models e.g. the SW-CMM.

We can think about CMMI in a collection of existing models under a new umbrella or the natural evolution of the CMM. CMMI is larger, wider and deeper than CMM and has some advantages like better model architecture with more model details, is applicable to more than just software, has better coverage of engineering areas, and continuous model allows organizations to mature in manner most relevant to the business. Among the disadvantages of the CMMI we can mention size is much larger than the CMM, more difficult to become a trained assessor, complex maturity rating of continuous representation may make it difficult to set maturity goals.

As a conclusion CMMI is clearly a new challenge for the software leaders.

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