Initiatives

Capability Maturity Model® Integration (CMMI) Project

The Department of Defense's Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (ODUSD(A&T), Systems and Software Engineering Directorate initiated the CMM Integration (CMMI) Project in February 1998 as a collaborative effort among government, industry and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). Representatives from 17 companies, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, and the SEI combined the existing Software CMM, the Systems Engineering Capability Model, the Electronics Industries Alliance (EIA) 731 standard, and the Integrated Product Development CMM under a single architectural framework to ensure an integrated approach to process improvement across the software engineering and systems engineering disciplines.

In recent years, the department noticed problems with the reporting and use of the ratings resulting from this appraisal method, so v1.2 includes improvements to enhance the integrity of appraisals. SSA continues to work with industry and the SEI to identify improvements to both the model and the appraisal method with efforts focused on development of v2.0. This the Defense AT&L July/August 2007 article summarizes the efforts.

The publication of Understanding and Leveraging a Supplier's CMMI Efforts: A Guidebook for Acquirers was a major effort to help acquirers benefit from a supplier's use of CMMI while avoiding the pitfalls associated with unrealistic expectations. The Guidebook describes CMMI fundamentals and gives the kind of information on maturity and capability ratings that will help acquirers to effectively interpret information obtained from a supplier's CMMI effort.

SSE, as co-sponsor of the CMMI with the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) SE Division, launched development of the second model, the CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ) as part of the CMMI v1.2 product suite in November 2006. Various workshops had been held over the previous few years to establish the requirements for such a model, and the final model leveraged work that General Motors and the SEI did to publish Adapting CMMI for Acquisition Organizations: A Preliminary Report in June 2006. The project involved stakeholders from across government and industry, and the final model was released on 1 November 2007.

In 2005, the SEI published v1.1 of the CMMI Acquisition Module (CMMI-AM) for use by government acquisition program offices as well as other acquisition organizations. It was a collection of best practices for acquisition that builds on the CMMI model framework, but is a concise document less than 40 pages. Now that the CMMI-ACQ model is published, the CMMI-AM is being replaced with the CMMI-ACQ Primer that can guide acquisition offices unfamiliar with CMMI on their journey of process improvement.

A Defense Acquisition University (DAU) Continuous Learning Module (CLM) is being developed to cover CMMI and acquisition and will be based on both the Guidebook for Acquirers and the CMMI-ACQ model to help further deploy this knowledge across the workforce.

Visit the guidance and tools section to download the latest models and guidance. Additional information can be found in the briefings section.