

The Immaturity of CMM - signa11
http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/cmm.htm

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hga
I focused mostly on the "Feet of clay: The CMM's fundamental misunderstanding
of level 1 Organizations" section and I find a lot to disagree with.

The biggest issue, which I don't sense the author gets, is "repeatability".
Level One companies are entirely dependent on "heroes" (or cowboys, take your
pick :-) and their ability to follow their first success is not particularly
predictable, except that it's likely to be poor. Look at Lotus, who's first
product (the 1-2-3 spreadsheet etc.) was written by a team of 7 or so assembly
language wizards for the first IBM-PC and that lost it's ability to develop
software after that (1-2-3's mid-life kicker that saved the company (for a
while) was an unauthorized project written by two programmer who left the
company before the need for it was acknowledged).

I think we realize this less now because we're so much more leveraged and
"powerful" today; a small team can do so much more and continue to do that if
the company avoids Teamicide ([http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-
Projects-Teams-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-
Teams-Second/dp/0932633439/) , _READ IT!!!_ ) and doesn't have to grow its
team (much).

Microsoft, on the other hand, by the 1994 date of this essay was most
certainly _not_ a Level One company. I've long said the secret to their
success in the period that includes that year was that they retained the
ability to write software that basically worked (compare this to all their
Windows Office competitors who lost in the transition to Windows 3.x: with the
exception of WordPerfect, the others couldn't get past the "crashes too often"
stage, and WordPerfect's release was a sad joke. Sure, it didn't crash, but it
also would frequently move all your figures and tables to the bottom of your
document.)

It's No Accident that Microsoft was run during that period by a seriously good
hacker (anyone who can successfully rewrite an assembly BASIC interpreter
(without benefit of a computer) during a transcontinental flight earns my
respect.)

I too prefer Gerald Wienberg's approach to this, and CMM can obviously be
fetishized and at best promises little more than "we can continue write
mediocre software", but there's something there that's worthwhile that it's
trying to achieve.

------
mikhailfranco
That might be true, but this is funnier ....

    
    
      CIMM  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Immaturity_Model

