
The Immaturity of CMM - Jtsummers
http://sunnyday.mit.edu/16.355/bach-cmm.html
======
Jtsummers
I came upon this from another post [0], also worth reading. While this article
was written when CMM was still CMM, and not CMMI, I feel much of it still
holds up today. CMMI (for those who don't know) has two methods of ranking in
use today. One is the same as described in this article (5 maturity levels),
the other is to evaluate each process area individually and rate them
(capability levels). The latter is (IMO) better but still not great, but it
doesn't get you that great "CMMI Level 5" certification. Consequently, many
organizations don't use that approach.

> The CMM encourages displacement of goals from the true mission of improving
> process to the artificial mission of achieving a higher maturity level. I
> call this "level envy", and it generally has the effect of blinding an
> organization to the most effective use of its resources. The SEI itself
> recognizes this as a problem and has taken some steps to correct it. The
> problem is built in to the very structure of the model, however, and will be
> very hard to exorcise.

This is still a problem, 25 years after this article was written. My current
employers have a goal of hitting CMMI Level 3. To be clear, they've made it
the business's _goal_ to hit CMMI Level 3. The goal isn't to deliver quality
software. The goal isn't to deliver on time and on budget. _The goal is to be
CMMI Level 3_. This is a _terrible_ objective, but you see this sort of
objective everywhere. It's the goal of looking good and believing that somehow
being good follows from it directly. Form over function.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135043)

