Selection priority of process areas based on CMMI continuous representation

An essential decision that must be made by software organizations that adopt the continuous representation of the capability maturity model integration (CMMI) for software process improvement concerns a suitable path that best meets their business objectives and mitigates the organization's risk. However, the CMMI models released by the Software Engineering Institute do not give their adopters any guidance on how to make such a decision. Thus, managers often make subjective selections of the areas in which to implement process improvement. Our study presents a decision support model that assists managers in determining the priorities of the CMMI process areas based on the characteristics of the is being developed. The proposed model was validated by using the ISBSG repository, and an example is presented to demonstrate the application of the model. Given the fact that hardly any research has yet been done on how to select the CMMI process areas to initialize process improvement, this study provides a starting point for the community in considering this important issue.