CMMI for Acquisition Process Areas

There are 6 CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ) Process Areas (PAs) unique to this new constellation: Agreement Management (AM), Acquisition Requirements Development (ARD), Acquisition Technical Management (ATM), Acquisition Validation (AVAL), Acquisition Verification (AVER), and Solicitation and Supplier Agreement Development (SSAD). AM, ARD, and SSAD are Maturity Level 2 PAs and ATM, AVAL, and AVER are Maturity Level 3 PAs.

In addition to these six new PAs, there are other changes at the Specific Practice level in Project Planning (PP), Project Monitoring and Control (PMC), Integrated Project Management (IPM), and Organizational Process Definition (OPD).

PP SP 1.1 - Establish and maintain the acquisition strategy

PP SP 2.7 - Plan transition to operations and support (the addition of this SP makes the old SP 2.7 now SP 2.8)

PMC SP 1.8 - Monitor transition to operations and support

OPD SP 1.7 - Establsh and maintain organizational rules and guidelines for the structure, formation, and operation of integrated teams

IPM SP 1.6 - Establish and maintain integrated teams

The difficult concept to understand if your background is in the CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV)is that every core PA is interpreted in the context of the acquirer's processes.

When looking at the Continuous Representation for CMMI-ACQ the category Acqusition replaces the category Engineering from the CMMI-DEV constellation. And the other change is that Requirements Management (REQM) is now included in the Project Management category.

And on a final note, it is possible to perform a blended appraisal CMMI-DEV and CMMI-ACQ.