Rather than inventing metrics or quality or performance standards, the integrated project team should use existing commercial quality standards (identified during market research), such as International Standards Organization (ISO) 9000 or the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Models®.

ISO has established quality standards (the ISO 9000 series) that are increasingly being used by US firms to identify suppliers who meet the quality standards. The term "ISO 9001 2000" refers to a set of new quality management standards which apply to all kinds of organizations in all kinds of areas. Some of these areas include manufacturing, processing, servicing, printing, electronics, computing, legal services, financial services, accounting, banking, aerospace, construction, textiles, publishing, energy, telecommunications, research, health care, utilities, aviation, food processing, government, education, software development, transportation, design, instrumentation, communications, biotechnology, chemicals, engineering, farming, entertainment, horticulture, consulting, insurance, and so on.

The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, a Federally funded research and development center, has developed Capability Maturity Models® (CMM) to "assist organizations in maturing their people, process, and technology assets to improve long-term business performance." SEI has developed CMMs for software, people, and software acquisition, and assisted in the development of CMMs for Systems Engineering and Integrated Product Development:

• CMMI® Capability Maturity Model-Integration for Software
• P-CMM People Capability Maturity Model
• SA-CMM Software Acquisition Capability Maturity Model
• SE-CMM Systems Engineering Capability Maturity Model
• IPD-CMM Integrated Product Development Capability Maturity Model