CMMI Level 5

Originally devised by the US Department of Defense to objectively rank the process maturity of software vendors –in business terms, as a way to greatly diminish the risk of a contractor delivering software late and over-budget—the model has been adopted worldwide as a reputable validation of a company’s software development maturity.

At level 1 of the CMMi (termed “initial), a company’s development process is deemed “chaotic and ad-hoc”. At level 4, the process is considered “managed”, meaning that it is measured by metrics, is clearly defined and is repeatable. At its highest level of 5, a company’s development process is considered “optimized”, it is subject to constant improvement.

Ironically, many industry practitioners have created a bad name for CMMi, associating the model with process-heavy procedures that are slow, inflexible and create costly overheads. Unfortunately the reputation –in many companies—is well deserved. The good news is that it does not have to be the case: CMMi is a model, not a standard. Hence, a company is not forced to adopt particular procedures but rather can develop its own method, as long as certain key Commitments and Abilities are met.

PSL has implemented the CMMi level 5 recommendations in a way that emphasizes process transparency and discipline –i.e. being able to measure productivity, to track the quality of the code, to deploy large teams in a manner that is organized and repeatable across the board and across engagements—while assuring great agility and adaptability. Indeed, we deploy most projects under agile SCRUM, yet keep disciplined metrics of our performance. With PSL the clients gets the best of both worlds: the agility of SCRUM together with the discipline and quality of the highest level of CMMi.

See our web-cast: CMMi and Agile