Benchmarking Process Maturity

by David Zubrow

The Capability Maturity Model® for Software (SW-CMM®) [7] has become the de facto global standard against which many organizations rate the maturity of their development processes. In this article, I offer guidance for using SW-CMM process assessment data for benchmarking purposes and describe a special in-depth analysis of the results of such process assessments. The main method for performing an assessment against SW-CMM is the CMM-Based Appraisal for Internal Process Improvement (CBA IPI) [3], which primarily relies on interviews and document review to collect evidence about the maturity of an organization's processes. I will also discuss upcoming benchmarking guidance for CMM Integration^SM (CMMI®) [2] and the Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI^SM) methodology [6].