Experiences with the Capability Maturity Model in a research environment

The project described here was aimed at evaluating the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in the context of a research organization. Part of the evaluation was a standard CMM assessment. It was found that CMM could be applied to a research organization, although its five maturity levels were considered rather rigid. It was felt to be a disadvantage, especially by the management, that business goals were not explicitly taken into account by CMM. It turned out that the process of assessing is more important than the assessment itself. The assessment process introduced to the organization a `language' which encouraged discussion of the software development process and its improvement. This topic had hardly been discussed before the assessment.