Software Engineering Institute

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) provides guidance for improving your organization's processes and ability to manage the development, acquisition, and maintenance of products and services. CMM Integration places proven practices into a structure that helps your organization assess its organizational maturity and process area capability, establish priorities for improvement, and guide the implementation of these improvements. CMM Integration was conceived to sort out the problem of using multiple CMMs. Three source models—(1) Capability Maturity Model for Software (SW-CMM) v2.0 draft C, (2) Electronic Industries Alliance/Interim Standard (EIA/IS) 731, and (3) Integrated Product Development Capability Maturity Model (IPD-CMM) v0.98—were combined into a single model to be used in enterprise-wide process improvement and integration activities. A common framework to support the future integration of other discipline-specific CMMI models was developed. In addition, all CMMI products were developed to be consistent and compatible with the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) 15504 technical report for software process assessment. Like other CMMs, CMMI models provide guidance for organizations to use when they develop processes. CMMI models are not processes or process descriptions. The actual processes used in an organization depend on many factors, including application domain(s) and organization structure and size.