CMMI Stands for Capability Maturity Model Integration. CMMI is an improvement model for software development. Every organization has a certain capability to produce software, in certain maturity. CMMI expresses the maturity in various levels from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Each and every level is known as key process area.

CMMI was defined by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in the early 90’s. It is a process technique for evaluating how efficiently a company is able to deliver technology, products to its customers. Initially the idea was used for the U.S. Department of Defense contract work, but quickly, the software industry began to support this work.

CMMI works on another level. It tells you, which things you have to consider and concentrate in SW development, and also it tell you which questions you should ask yourself. It does not tell you the way to answer those questions.

CMMI is a model specifically designed for software development. It gives guidance on what to do. ISO 9001 is a generic model, with related software specific interpretation and guidelines.

An assessment is a kind of procedures to verify the compliance to a model. In a CMMI assessment, the result will be certain to CMMI level and a list of non-compliances of the next levels. It also offers a continuous approach where maturity is not expressed in levels.

The maturity level starts from 1 – 5, and the average maturity level in SW organization is around level 3. Based on many years of CMMI experience in the industry, level 4 and 5 companies are found to be very rare.