Experiences with the capability maturity model in a research environment

This paper describes a project aimed at the evaluation of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in the context of a research organization. The evaluation was done at the Winand Staring Centre (a Dutch 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 to be rather rigid. It was felt to be a disadvantage, especially by management, that business goals were not explicitly taken into account by CMM. It turned out that the process of doing an assessment 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 was hardly discussed before the assessment.