Han Reichgelt School of Computing and Software Engineering Southern Polytechnic State Unversity Overview
The purpose of this document is to provide a guide to the Capability Maturity Model Integration for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ) and the guidebook on using the Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI-DEV) in IT system and service acquisition projects. It will provide some general background on CMMI and the rationale behind the models, discuss the structure of the CMMI models, and provide more detailed guidelines on how to read the CMMI-ACQ document and the guidebook on using CMMI-DEV for acquisition. This is a high level document that is intended merely as a guide. It provides pointers to the relevant literature and material, but does not discuss the material in depth. In other words, it cannot, and is not intended to, substitute for the actual material itself. The document relies heavily on the CMMI-ACQ document and quotes extensively from it. Unless otherwise indicated, each phrase or sentence in quotation marks is taken from the CMMI-ACQ document.
Background
CMMI is the culmination of an effort that started in the mid 1980s. CMMI was developed under the leadership of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. More details about SEI can be found at www.sei.cmu.edu. The primary impetus for the development of CMMI was provided by the US Department of Defense, which had become concerned about the problems that it has consistently run into in software development projects. Software tended to be delivered late, over budget and/or lacking at least some of the expected functionality. Moreover, the US Department of Defense was not alone in its concerns. For example, the Standish group (www.standishgroup.com) published its so-called Chaos report in 1984 (http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/NCP08083B.pdf) in which it reported