Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Am I Mature? Or Are You My Mommy?
Let us point you at one more business buzzword link. Even though we
think this particular site and their work are being ill-applied by many
well-intentioned IT managers, there is still a great deal of value in the
Carnegie Mellon Capability Maturity Model (
http://www.sei.
cmu.edu/cmm/
). At the very least it provides an objective way to assess
the level of process sophistication you have in your organization.
The CMM defines five levels of maturity:
1. Initial
2. Repeatable
3. Defined
4. Managed
5. Optimizing
If we may grossly oversimplify (and why should we stop now?),
“Initial” means you do things differently every time. You just make your
best guess about what the right thing to do is, and you do it. “Repeatable”
means that you have hit upon a method that appears to work, and you
use it consistently. “Defined” means that somebody has written it down.
“Managed” means that the process is actively maintained and supervised
in an effort to adapt it to changing circumstances. “Optimizing” means
that measurements (“metrics”) are made that objectively assess the pro-
cess, and ensure that continuous improvement takes place and can be so
proven.
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What we have shown you in this chapter probably falls in the Repeat-
able category, a long way from the engineering and management nirvana
of Optimizing.
The problem that seems to come up with this system is that very bad processes may
be very mature and very good processes may be relatively immature. Obviously,
however, an Optimizing process must be steadily moving towards the good.
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