CMMI – Learn more about CMMI^®

The Capability Maturity Model Integration® (CMMI) is a model which provides the essential elements needed for effective process improvement. The CMMI® model and strategies can guide process improvement efforts across a division, project, or an entire organization.

Companies and/or organizations that are taking their first steps down the CMMI path most often do so carrying a lot of conceptual baggage. If your organization is just beginning its “CMMI journey,” there are some things you should know.

The CMMI model suite is valuable – but not of and by itself. An effort to attain compliance with the CMMI must be focused on achieving distinct, specific, and meaningful business objectives.

• Do you want to be more productive?
• Do you want your development staff to better design to quality attributes identified in a software architecture?
• Are there elements of (external or self-induced) chaos you’d like to reduce or eliminate?
• Are there six sigma goals for quality or time to delivery?

More often than you might think, companies/organizations may convince themselves that they are “already doing all this stuff,” and that an appraisal will be the final step in achieving a CMMI Maturity Level. Our experience, so far without exception, is that, even when the organization exhibits a wealth of fairly mature engineering and development practices, those practices do not measure up to the CMMI in terms of either completeness or in consistency and institutionalization.

Focusing on strategies like Lean or six sigma can and should energize your CMMI improvement effort. Jacobs is a leader in developing and applying these focusing strategies.

Lean principles can, and should, be applied to your process improvement effort as well, and can serve to keep your investment costs down, simplify the process, ensure rapid process deployment and implementation, and solve any problems with team buy-in and institutionalization.