CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) is a process improvement model for the development of products and services. It consists of development and maintenance activities that cover the product lifecycle from conception through delivery and maintenance. Here, the emphasis is on the work necessary to build and maintain the total product. CMMI can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization. CMMI was developed by a group of experts from industry, government, and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University situated in U.S.

Benefits of CMMI

- CMMI best practices enable organizations to more explicitly link "management" and "engineering" activities to their business objectives.
- Guidance for efficient, effective improvement across multiple process disciplines in an organization.
- Address organizational functions critical to their products and services.
- Helps in setting process improvement goals and priorities.
- Incorporate lessons learned from additional areas of best practice.

    CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV) provides a comprehensive integrated solution for development and maintenance activities applied to products and services. CMMI for Development, Version 1.2 is a continuation and update of CMMI version 1.1 and has been facilitated by the concept of CMMI "constellations" wherein a set of core components can be augmented by additional material to provide application-specific models with highly common content. CMMI-DEV is the first of such constellations and represents the development area of interest.

    The purpose of CMMI for Development is to help organizations improve their development and maintenance processes for both products and services. CMMI for Development is a collection of best practices that is generated from the CMMI Framework.1 The CMMI Framework supports the CMMI Product Suite by allowing multiple models, training courses, and appraisal methods to be generated that support specific areas of interest.