Capability Maturity Model

Capability Maturity Model

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) (a registered service mark of Carnegie Mellon University, CMU) is a development model created after study of data collected from organizations that contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense, who funded the research. This model became the foundation from which Carnegie Mellon created the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). The term "maturity" relates to the degree of formality and optimization of processes, from ad hoc practices, to formally defined steps, to managed result metrics, to active optimization of the processes.

When the model is applied to an existing organization's software-development processes, it allows an effective approach toward improving them. Eventually it became clear that the model could be applied to other processes. This gave rise to a more general concept that is applied to business.