Capability Maturity Model (CMM) helps a business quickly understand its current level of capability and performance in the context of its own objectives and as compared with similar businesses and organizations.

CMM is a performance improvement model for companies, projects and technology & operations infrastructure. It is based on the essential elements of effective processes that have been synthesized by Crosby, Deming, Juran, Humphrey and other star process management experts.

CMM describes an evolutionary improvement path from ad hoc, immature processes to disciplined, mature processes with improved quality and effectiveness.

Proved effective globally over the last 35 years, CMM is an integrated framework of best practices that can rapidly improve and sustain a company’s performance and elevate quality, profitability and competitiveness.

CMM describes a five-level evolutionary path of increasingly organized and systematically more mature processes: initial level, repeatable level, defined, managed and, finally, optimizing level. We have captured the key characteristics of each level below for your convenience. The CMMI Institute Resource Center has a collection of free digital guides that we find invaluable.