Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (CMU/SEI) has developed a software Capability Maturity Model (CMM), a proven vehicle that you can use to evaluate the effectiveness of your development process, and buyers of software can use to assess a potential supplier’s practices. The CMM model consists of a set of practices, arranged into five levels, against which the organization can determine its development processes and use it as a model for improvement. The five levels of the CMM are:
1. Initial
2. Repeatable
3. Defined
4. Managed
5. Optimizing.