As a process improvement consultant working extensively with the Capability Maturity Model - Integration, I have discussed the possibility of using CMMI as a tool for improving the processes of many organisations. One issue that I frequently encounter is a perception that CMMI is a tool which is really only appropriate or useful for ‘large’ organizations (The term ‘large’ is suitably abstract and seems usually to be used as shorthand for ‘organizations that are bigger than us’, however there are formalised definitions such as this one:).
This is a long-held view that has been around from the very early days of CMMI, and in fairness it probably arose as a result of the circumstances that originally gave rise to the Capability Maturity Model concept.
The original software CMM was developed as a response to a software development crisis in the early 80’s in which the demand for software systems grew dramatically, but the development processes to adequately support these projects were still in their infancy. This led to cost overruns, delays and erratic quality in the developed systems and prompted the US Air Force to fund a study to try to identify ‘best practice’ which eventually led to the Capability Maturity Model concept.
This study focused on US government/defence contractors, and in particular on the large, expensive, programs where the issues that were being experienced caused the most damage. Hence CMMs (and later CMMI), from their very inception were linked by association with ‘large’ organizations running ‘large’ projects.
Another factor that has doubtless fed this perception in people’s minds is the sheer size of the model. CMMI has always been a large model, and in recent versions, as new ‘domains’ have been introduced, the practice count has increased still further as ‘best practice’ from disciplines such as Safety, Security and Data Management has been added into the model. In the current V3.0 model there are a total of 276 practices covering 31 practice areas.
Purely going by the numbers, this ‘feels’ like a lot of work, that might understandably seem daunting to a small, resource constrained organization.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that CMMI is seen as a ‘large’ model, that is best suited to ‘large’ organizations running ‘large’ projects and therefore unlikely to be useful for smaller organizations.
However, if we look a little deeper, we can see that this perception is not entirely supported by the evidence.
In May 2024, ISACA updated their Performance Results Report (https://cmmiinstitute.com/resource-files/public/cmmi-performance-report-summary) which analyses the data from all appraisals conducted over a 5 year period to identify typical improvement results reports by CMMI users and to provide additional contextual information about the types of organizations using the model.
One aspect that the report shows is a breakdown of the size of organizations that are performing CMMI appraisals, and this makes for very interesting reading in the context of this particular CMMI myth:
The report shows that nearly ¾ of all appraisals performed over the study period were carried out within organizational units (OUs) of 50 FTE’s or less, and 90% of all appraisals are conducted on organizational units of 100 FTEs or less.
We do need to caveat this finding a little: the term ‘Organizational Unit’ can refer to an entire organization but can also refer to a very clearly defined subset of a larger organization. However, it is still clear that a significant proportion – indeed, a clear majority - of the appraisals being performed worldwide ARE being performed by small organizations.
However, there is still the issue of model ‘size’ to address. CMMI is undoubtedly a very substantial model with a lot of content that needs to be considered, but is that necessarily a barrier to ‘adoption’ within small organizations? The Performance Report results clearly suggest that this is not the case but why is that?
There are technical issues why the seemingly daunting set of 276 practices might not be quite as intimidating as they might at first seem; there are links and relationships between many of the practices which mean that implementing one practice within your processes might in fact cover several CMMI practices.
The ‘levels’ within CMMI are also defined in such a way that the lowest level practices (Level 1) are effectively subsumed by the Level 2 so if you implement the Level 2 Practices in the model, the related level 1 practices should also be covered by default. Across the full model, this means that 47 practices are covered by higher level practices, which again, substantially decreases the number of practices to worry about.
However, there is a more obvious, fundamental reason why the size of the model should not be seen as a barrier to implementation. Put simply – you don’t NEED to implement the full model; in fact, very few organizations do! Most organizations only need to look at a specific subset of the CMMI practices.
There are two aspects of this to consider, depending on how you want to use the CMMI and what you hope to achieve.
Most organizations tend to look at CMMI because they are interested in achieving a CMMI Maturity Level. A Maturity Level is defined as:
“A rating that describes the degree to which processes in an Organizational Unit (OU) meet the intents and values of a predefined set of Practice Areas. The rating is based on the achievement of a specified set of practice group levels within the predefined set of Practice Areas.”
There are many benefits arising from the achievement of a Maturity Level; in addition to the benefits of improved capability within your process set, which should lead to improved performance, Maturity Levels are still sometimes seen as ‘pre-requisites’ for bidding on certain work and when bidding for US government contracts, they can give a competitive advantage over organizations which do not have them.
If you are seeking a Maturity Level, by definition, you need to look at a predefined set of practice areas (groups of related practices) up to a specific level. The set of practice areas you are interested in will depend on the ‘domains’ that you choose to look at. CMMI currently defines 8 separate domains which contain best practice for specialist areas such as Product Development, Service Delivery, Supplier Management etc. Each domain contains 1 to 4 practice areas and you must select at least one domain if you are seeking a Maturity Level. You must also look at all 17 of the ‘Core’ practice areas which are common across all domains.
This combination of target Maturity Level and Selected domain(s) will have a very profound effect on the number of practices that you need to look at.
For example, if you were going for Maturity Level 3 for the Services domain, you would have 176 practices in total to look at, but (as discussed above), 28 of those are level 1 practices that should be subsumed into the associated Level 2 practices. By contrast, if you go for Level 2 in Supplier Management, you have only 98 practices in scope of which 28 are subsumed into the other 70.
So your choice of Maturity Level and Domain will have a significant impact on how much of the CMMI Model you need to concern yourself with.
The other CMMI usage mode applies to organizations that are more interested in specific improvements rather than (necessarily) attaining a specific Maturity Level. As soon as you move away from a Maturity Level approach, you have unlimited flexibility in the selection of the areas and practices that you want to focus your attention on. You can pick and mix to focus on specific areas rather than try to get a consistent level of capability across the whole model. Instead of 100s of practices to work on, you could focus your efforts on (say) the 10 highest priority ones to start with and then pick off others when you are able or when the need arises.
One final thing to consider, which applies regardless of which way you are using the model. When people first start to pick up CMMI, their first scoping appraisal or gap analysis is likely to reveal that many of the 276 practices are already being done within their existing process set.
So, whilst CMMI is a large, comprehensive framework with a lot of practices in it to consider, this should not be seen as a barrier to it being used effectively within small organizations as well as large ones. As we have seen from the evidence of the Performance Report, despite this perception, most organizations using CMMI fall into the ‘smaller’ business category.
If you are interested in exploring how CMMI might be of use to your organization or would like to discuss how to go about adopting CMMI, we provide a full range of consultancy and appraisal services. Contact us for further details or visit our web site:
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