Maturity Stages

The SEI approach gives a measure of the worldwide effectiveness of an organization software engineering practices and established 5 process maturity stages that are defined as follows.

Level 1: Initial   The software process is characterized occasionally even chaotic and as ad hoc.   Few processes are described and their success depends on individual effort.

Level 2: Repeatable - Basic project management processes are developing to track schedule, cost, and functionality.   The necessary process discipline is in place to repeat previous successes on projects with same applications.

Level 3: Defined - The software process for both are engineering and management activities is standardized documented, and integrated into an company broad software process.  All projects use documents and approved version of the organization's process for building and maintaining software.  This level combines all characteristics describe for level 3.

Level 4:   Managed - Detailed measures of the product quality and software process are collected.  Both the software process and products are quantitatively understood and controlled using detailed measures. This level includes all characteristics describe for level 3.

Level 5:   Optimizing - Continuous process improvement is enabled by quantitative feedback from the procedure and from testing innovative technologies and ideas. This level combines all characteristics describe for level 4.

The five levels describe through the SEI are derived as a consequence of evaluating responses to the SEI assessment questionnaire that is totally based on the CMM.  The results of the questionnaire are distilled to a single numerical grade which provides an indication of an organization's process maturity.