The previous post was about creating a WBS. This activity is one of the activities described in the CMMI for development (Capability Maturity Model Integration) model. CMMI goal is to provide organizations a tool helping them in their processes definition and improvement. Behind the term process it is simply the definition of the way an organisation or a person perform a defined job. For example, if you are a house painter, you know the process of painting a room (rub down previous painting, put a finishing plaster to polish the wall, etc.). It is exactly the same thing for the development activity, CMMI for development aims helping organization involved in development in defining their processes. CMMI does not define accurately how to do since each organization has its own way to work. Instead it focus on describing practices that have to be implemented to successfully reach goals.
In addition to the development (CMMI-DEV), CMMI is also defined for several domains:
- CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ): How to acquire products and services.
- CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC): How to define and deliver services.
It is also interesting to cite here:
- People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM): How to manage people in an organization.
To focus on CMMI, it is strictly organized in Process Area (PA). A Process Area is the main element of CMMI, it defines a set of practices in a dedicated area like Project Monitoring & Control (PMC) or Project Planning (PP). Each process Area contains:
- Generic Goals (GG) : Goals of the process area shared between several processes. They are called generic since they have to be achieved for each process. Generic Goals describe several activities permitting to reach the goal. These activities are called Generic Pratices (GP) . The term generic is used because these practices have to be applied in each process area, for example the “Train People” practice is important whatever the related process area.
- Specific Goals (SG) : Goals of the process area specific to a process. They describe the goals of the process area (in contrast with generic that can be applied for all process areas). Specific Goals describe several activities permitting to reach the goal. These activities are called Specific Practices (SP). It is the description of an activity permitting to achieve the corresponding goal. These activities are the core of the process area. For example creating the WBS is an activity of the Specific Practice “Estimate the Scope of the Project” related to the Specific Goal “Establish Estimates” of the Process Area “Project Planning”.
I will not talk about maturity levels now, since I think that it is not the most important part of CMMI. Maturity level is often used by organizations to promote themselves. CMMI will be one of the central topics of this blog, in consequence maturity level will be discussed later.
