Quality Assurance: Software Quality Assurance Made Easy pdfdrive com

Chapter 2: The Capability Maturity Model
Integration
CCMI is a program of process improvement and appraisal by Carnegie Mellon
University. It is a requirement in most US government contracts, especially
those projects related to software development. It can be a guide for process
improvement in an organization, a division, or even a project. It defines the
process maturity levels as Initial, Managed, and Defined.
At present, the Capability Maturity Model Integration has three areas, namely
Product and Service Development, Service Establishment and Management, and
Product and Service Acquisition. A framework guides organizations for
improving or developing processes to meet business goals. Initially, CMMI was
useful in software engineering but evolved into a more generalized model to
include other areas of interest like acquisition of products and services, delivery
of services, and development of hardware products.

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History of CMMI
The goal of CMMI was to improve the use of maturity models by including
various models into a framework. The project included members from the
Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, government, and industry. The
National Defense Industrial Association and the Office of the Secretary of
Defense sponsored the project.
CMMI evolved from the capability maturity model. In November 2010, it
released Version 1.3 to support Agile Software Development, alignment of
representation, and improvements to maturity practices. It integrates various
organizational functions, provides guidance for processes involving quality, sets
improvement process goals, and offers a benchmark for evaluating present
processes.

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CMMI Representation
CMMI can be staged or continuous. A continuous representation allows users to
focus on important processes to meet the immediate business goals of the
organization. On the other hand, the staged representation provides a basis for
comparing organizations and project maturity. It also offers a sequence of
improvements.

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