Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process improvement model that provides a set of industry-recognized practices to address productivity, performance, costs, and stakeholder satisfaction.
It is used to guide process improvement across projects, departments, and entire organizations. It helps organizations in examining the effectiveness of their processes, establishes priorities for improvement, and implementing appropriate improvements.
CMMI helps in the successful completion of projects. Each project will have effective project planning, project cost estimating, project measurements, project milestone tracking, project quality control, risk management, project change management, processes, and communications. With capable project managers and technical personnel, organizations will achieve significant results and substantial volumes of reusable material.
The CMMI provides an integrated, consistent, enduring framework for enterprise-wide process improvement and can accommodate new initiatives as future needs are identified. Unlike single-discipline or stove-pipe models that can result in confusion and higher costs when implemented together.
Those providing systems and software engineering products and services to organizations that transform customer needs expectations, and constraints into products; and support these products throughout their life. If you manufacture, code, analyze, maintain or document a product, you need this!
There is no concept of certification in CMMI, rather an organization is appraised. It can be awarded a maturity level rating (1-5) or a capability level achievement profile. Organizations measure their own appraise by conducting their multiple in-house assessments.
A maturity level is a well-defined evolutionary plateau toward achieving a mature software process. Each maturity level provides a layer in the foundation for continuous process improvement.
In CMMI models with a staged representation, there are five maturity levels designated by the numbers 1 through 5 whereby 1 is the lowest level of maturity and 5 the highest.