CMMi, also known as the Capability Maturity Model Integration, is a hot topic in software developing and/or supplying organizations these days. To many it is the new hot buzzword, replacing ISO as the de facto standard of choice. Many managers feel that if you aren’t CMMi compliant, you’re bleeding money.
Take the above paragraph with a grain of salt. Just because many managers may hold an opinion does NOT make it correct. I’ve personally been a member on a few CMMi process groups, and studied it heavily in multiple Software Engineering courses while attaining my bachelors degree. Here are my thoughts on the subject.
CMMi requires a dedicated process team to achieve even level 2 (the first certifiable “level” in the model). These should be a team of engineers and managers who can devote at least 5-10 hours a week solely to CMMi efforts. Ideally they should also have time to work on other projects, so they can inform their team mates who are not on the CMMi process improvement group of developments, and explain why any overhead introduced is necessary. Keeping process improvement group members on other teams also forces them to use their own processes, allowing them to identify any problems in them.
Note that this is a fairly heavy commitment to make for a small organization.
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