Characterizing the Software Process: A Maturity Framework

Abstract

Improvement in the performance of software development organizations is an essential national need. The improvement process has five basic elements: 1 - an understanding of the current status of the development process, 2 - a vision of the desired process, 3 - a prioritized list of required improvements actions, 4 - a plan to accomplish these actions and 5 - the resources and commitment toexecute the plan. This paper addresses the first three of these elements, by providing a model for software organizational improvement. The structure of this model provides five maturity levels, identifies the key improvements required at each level, and establishes a priority order for implementation. This model has been tested with a number of organizations and found a reasonably represent the status and needs of actual software development groups.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1987
Accession Number
ADA182895

Entities

People

  • Watts Humphrey

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Air Force Facilities
  • Classification
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Cost Estimates
  • Data Analysis
  • Debugging
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Measurement
  • Productivity
  • Project Management
  • Software Development
  • Software Testing
  • Technical Information Centers
  • Test Methods

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Organizational Process Management (OPM).
  • Software Engineering.