SEI Published Appraisal Results

I have a question related to the published data in SEI web site: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/appraisal-program/profile/pdf/CMMI/2008MarCMMI.pdf Process Maturity Profile by All Reporting Organizations (Page 5):

1. 1.5% or the reporting organizations are (Initial - Maturity Level 1) rating. How is a Maturity Level 1 rating achieved?
2. Also, 8% of the reporting organizations indicate that a Maturity Level is Not Given. What does ‘Not Given’ mean…? Level 0 ?

In my understanding, Maturity Level is related to the Staged representation and can have
rating from ML 2 - 5.

It is great to see and hear that people are actually looking at this information and asking questions about how to interpret the data. You are on your way to understanding Measurement and Analysis!

To answer your first question, how is Maturity Level 1 provided? Obviously, an organization does not conduct a SCAMPI A appraisal to confirm that they are Maturity Level 1. So what happens in this case is the scope of the SCAMPI A appraisal is Maturity Level 2, 3, 4, or 5. But what happens is during the appraisal a serious goal impacting weakness in a Maturity Level 2 Process Area is found by the appraisal team. By the rules of the SCAMPI method then the resulting Maturity Level is 1. Since the SCAMPI A results must be submitted to the SEI, a rating of Maturity Level 1 appears. It doesn’t happen that often because most organizations take the appropriate steps to be prepared to achieve their target Maturity Level. That is why 1.5% of the reported results are for Maturity Level 1.

The Not Given category means that the organization did not report its resulting Maturity Level rating. I would hazard a guess that it probably means that they had successfully achieved Maturity Level 1. There is no Maturity Level 0, despite what many chaotic organizations say they are when first encountering the CMMI.