Thursday, October 2, 2008

Can organizations still claim CMM?

If I remember correctly SEI retired the CMM and that organizations can no longer advertize their CMM maturity level. If an organization continues to claim on their web site that they are CMM level 4 - even today - and in addition it is claiming that it will be assessed shortly for CMMi Level 5 for more than a year and half - should we ignore it or bring it to the notice of SEI?If you suggest that we should bring such instances to SEI notice please give me the email id.

The short answer is that any claim of a CMM Maturity Level is no longer valid. As for the ML 5 notice, that is fine as long as the web site states that the organization is working towards ML 5, but I don't see how that is a marketing point. It is similar to a graduate student stating that he or she is in the Doctoral Program and have everything completed except for his or her thesis.

The SEI is not in the business of investigating false claims. Buyer Beware: The only official location to verify an organization's Capability or Maturity Level is the SEI's Published Appraisal Results site http://sas.sei.cmu.edu/pars/pars.aspx. Since the appraisal results are only good for three years, the results are automatically removed on the anniversary date. Just check this site daily for a week or two and you will be able to verify this for yourself. The best approach is to contact the offending organization to inform them of their mistaken claims as they may be unaware of the changes to the SEI's appraisal program. And if you still feel that the SEI should be notified, I would suggest that you contact Jill Diorio who is the SEI Ethics person at jdiorio@sei.cmu.edu.

2 comments:

Rhea said...

Our organization has been preparing for version 1.2, with the news of CMMI 1.3 getting release, our teams are concerned if this preparation be sufficient enough? can we still get appraised for CMMI Dev 1.2 after 1.3 is release?

Henry Schneider said...

Dear Rhea,
V1.3 of the CMMI will be released in November 2010 and v1.3 of the SCAMPI method will be released in December 2010. There will be a sunset period for v1.2 (12 months) just like when v1.2 was released in August 2006. During the sunset period an organization can be appraised to either v1.2 or v1.3. At the end of the sunset period, only appraisals to v1.3 will be allowed.