TABLE OF CONTENTS The software industry has long criticized the CMM model for its lack of focus on business results. Other total quality management models, such as Malcolm Baldridge and the European Foundation for Quality Management, place heavy emphasis on business results and not just documenting the process to gain industry certification. CMMI clearly and repeatedly states the need for all process improvement activities to measurably support the organization's business objectives.
In [1], two key ideas were presented concerning organizations engaging in process improvement initiatives: (1) "The median annual cost per engineer of software process improvement using the CMM for Software was $1,375 " and (2) " The savings to organizations were about 5 times this amount $6,875 per software engineer." This statistic alone should have companies that build software systems scrambling around the world to become involved with their own process improvement initiatives based on CMM or now its enhanced and integrated big brother, CMM Integration.
If the statistics reported by the Software Engineering Institute are not motivating enough, the following examples that have occurred in the past 10 years should cause most of us to pause and think:
A bank in the United Kingdom transferred $3 billion to other banks because of a design flaw.
A major airline lost $50 million in bookings due to a design error.
A misplaced decimal point in software supporting rocket launching for the U.S. Air Force resulted...
