What is CMM?

CMM means Capability Maturity Model. It was created by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and focuses on the "software process". CMM offers a method of diagnosing the process, from which strengths and weaknesses arise and once the diagnosis is finished, it points out the way to go to continue improving systematically.

This diagnostic is performed through a pre-established scheme, which consists of interviews with the systems personnel with preset guidelines, their practices are discovered and irrefutable conclusions are reached, given that they come from the company's own personnel. Later, improvement plans are made. How rapid the progress is in the improvement depends on the distance that there is between the company's practices and what the model requires. The determined support of higher management is one critical success factor in an improvement project.