CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL - GUIDELINES FOR IMPROVING THE SOFTWARE PROCESS

The Capability Maturity Model is a ten-year-defined international development standard to best manage technical, monetary, and staff resources within a defined software development plan. This development plan specifies five levels of project competence, identifying each with a lessons learned from many large scale software projects, and support the International Standards Organization 9000 series quality assurance requirements. The CMM asks questions of projects planners rather than limiting the planner to a methodology, a tool environment, a data scheme, or a customer application. It defines quality factors of design, production, installation, and maintenance of ISO 9001 as well as configuration management, document accounting, software measurement, and interactive tools of ISO 9000-3. The text is divided into two parts. The first part describes the Capability Maturity Model and includes a Spaceshuttle software delivery example. The second part of the book defines key processes that comprise the top four of the five project levels. The appendices give include a list of acronyms, a glossary, a matrix of key software practices within each of the five project levels. A fifth appendix compares the ISO 9001 with the CMM.