Introduction to CMMI for Development: Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement, 3rd Edition

Mar 23, 2011

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CMMI for Development: Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement, 3rd Edition

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CMMI Framework

The CMMI Framework provides the structure needed to produce CMMI models, training, and appraisal components. To allow the use of multiple models within the CMMI Framework, model components are classified as either common to all CMMI models or applicable to a specific model. The common material is called the "CMMI Model Foundation" or "CMF."

The components of the CMF are part of every model generated from the CMMI Framework. Those components are combined with material applicable to an area of interest (e.g., acquisition, development, services) to produce a model.

A "constellation" is defined as a collection of CMMI components that are used to construct models, training materials, and appraisal related documents for an area of interest (e.g., acquisition, development, services). The Development constellation's model is called "CMMI for Development" or "CMMI-DEV."

The Architecture of the CMMI Framework

by Roger Bate

with a postscript by Mike Konrad

Over the years, as the CMMI Product Suite has been used in disparate industries and organizations, it became apparent that CMMI could be applied to all kinds of product development, especially if the terminology was kept general for similar practices.

A further revelation was that the process and project management practices of the model are suitable for a wide range of activities besides product development. This discovery led me to propose that we should enable the expansion of CMMI, including the extension of the scope of CMMI, by creating a new architecture for the CMMI Framework.

This new architecture would accommodate other areas of interest (e.g., Services and Acquisition). I was musing one day about the valuable best practices that were contained in models. I began to think of them as the stars of process improvement. I pushed this metaphor a little further to call the collection of components that would be useful in building a model, its training materials, and appraisal documents for an area of interest a constellation. This was the beginning of the architecture that was eventually created.

There are two primary objectives for the CMMI Framework architecture:

Enable the coverage of selected areas of interest to make useful and effective processes.
Promote maximum commonality of goals and practices across models, training materials, and appraisal methods.

These objectives pull in opposite directions; therefore, the architecture was designed as a bit of a compromise.

The CMMI Framework will be used in the future to accommodate additional content that the user community indicates is desirable. The framework contains components used to construct models and their corresponding training and appraisal materials. The framework is organized so that the models constructed will benefit from common terminology and common practices that have proven to be valuable in previous models.

The CMMI Framework is a collection of all model components, training material components, and appraisal components. These components are organized into groupings, called constellations, which facilitate construction of approved models and preserve the legacy of existing CMM and CMMI models.

In the framework, there are constellations of components that are used to construct models in an area of interest (e.g., Acquisition, Development, and Services). Also in the framework, there is a CMMI model foundation. This foundation is a skeleton model that contains the core model components in a CMMI model structure. The content of the CMMI model foundation is apropos to all areas of interest addressed by the constellations. A CMMI model for a constellation is constructed by inserting additional model components into the CMMI model foundation.

Because the CMMI architecture is designed to encourage preserving as much common material as is reasonable in a multiple constellation environment, the framework contains and controls all CMMI material that can be used to produce any constellation or model.

CMMI models have a defined structure. This structure is designed to provide familiar placement of model components of various constellations and versions. If you look at the structure of a process area, you'll see components including Process Area Name, Category, Maturity Level, Purpose, Introductory Notes, References, and Specific Goals. You will also find that every process area in this model (i.e., CMMI for Development) and all other CMMI models produced from the CMMI Framework have the same structure. This feature helps you to understand quickly where to look for information in any CMMI model.

One of the benefits of having a common architecture and a large portion of common content in the various models is that the effort required to write models, train users, and appraise organizations is greatly reduced. The ability to add model components to the common process areas permits them to expand their scope of coverage to a greater variety of needs. In addition, whole new process areas may be added to provide greater coverage of different areas of interest in the constellations.

CMMI models have a great deal of well-tested content that can be used to guide the creation of high performance processes. The CMMI architecture permits that valuable content to continue to work in different areas of interest, while allowing for innovation and agility in responding to new needs.

You can see that CMMI has grown beyond the star practices of the three original source models to constellations. This expansion into the galaxy is only possible with a well-thought-out and designed architecture to support it. The CMMI architecture has been designed to provide such support and will grow as needed to continue into the future.

Postscript

Roger passed away in 2009, about two years after this perspective was written for the second edition of this book. Roger's grand vision of constellations and a flexible architecture that established a deep level of commonality among CMMI models was largely realized in the sequential release of the three V1.2 CMMI models published between 2006 and 2009.

One of many anecdotes that reveals Roger's transcending vision and greatness and reflects on the early days of CMMI is when I was contacted by friend and colleague Tomoo Matsubara-san in 1997. He asked me to provide a short opinion piece for his Soapbox column in IEEE Software magazine. At the time, we at the SEI were confronted with consternation from many Software CMM transition partners because they felt that we were abandoning the Software CMM product line. Instead, we were pursuing the convergence of the software engineering and systems engineering process improvement communities by creating a product line that both could use.

We hoped such a convergence would not only eliminate the need to separately maintain two models and associated product lines (those for the Software CMM and the EIA 731 Systems Engineering Capability Model), but also would encourage synergism within organizations addressing system-wide performance issues. To me, the Soapbox column provided an opportunity to communicate what we were hoping to accomplish with CMMI, so I suggested to Roger that he write something for Matsubara-san's column on why software engineering would benefit from a "systems engineering" perspective.

This chain of events led to Roger's Soapbox piece, "Do Systems Engineering? Who, Me?"⁷ This anecdote typifies Roger's brilliance, ability to span multiple disciplines, and talent for motivating multiple stakeholders with a unifying vision and a shared mission to change the organization's behavior and achieve superior performance.

As mentioned, Roger's vision was largely realized with the release of the Version 1.2 CMMI Product Suite. For V1.3, however, we confronted a challenge that required some modification to Roger's initial vision for the CMMI architecture.

The challenge was the term "project," which commonly refers to an endeavor whose purpose and end are marked by the delivery of something tangible (e.g., a product). This term appeared throughout many of the process areas (PAs) and was generally a good fit for CMMI-ACQ and CMMI-DEV but not for CMMI-SVC. After researching the problem, we devised a solution: for V1.3, we would allow the CMF to vary across constellations in a very limited way. CMF material in CMMI-DEV and CMMI-ACQ could continue to refer to "projects;" whereas in CMMI-SVC, the reference would instead be to "work," "work activities," "services," or similar. In this way, the CMMI user community could continue to use common English terms in a familiar and consistent way while benefitting from a sharing of CMMI terminology and best practices (for 17 PAs) across a broad range of process improvement communities. (This idea was researched by exploratory implementation, a survey, and pilots; and it worked well.)

V1.3 benefits from many synergies. The sequential release of new constellations for V1.2 between 2006 and 2009 provided the opportunity to evaluate what CMF should be—one context at a time. However, in V1.3 development, model material originally proposed for one area of interest was sometimes extended to all three. Examples include the concept of quality attributes; prioritization of requirements; ontology for products and services; a richer set of examples for measurement and analysis; a sharper focus on what is essential to team performance (i.e., team composition, empowerment, and operational discipline); and alignment of high maturity practices with business objectives enabled by analytics. The V1.3 user may be unaware of these synergies or their sources, but may derive benefit from them.

With V1.3, we've only begun to explore ideas for the future of CMMI. Beyond V1.3, there are lots of promising directions forward, which is only the case because of Roger's original pioneering vision for CMMI. With Roger's passing, his Chief Architect mantle has been passed on to someone many years his junior (me) and I can assure our readers that well into his mid-80s, Roger remained a truly brilliant man, retaining his clear thinking and ear for nuance while maintaining a broad perspective when rendering an opinion; and so I recognize almost as much as anyone how big a space he has left behind. Although he was the one who conceived of the term constellations as a way of thinking about CMMI architecture, to us who knew him well, he was the real star of CMMI.

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