The CMM framework it assists organizations that operate in an application development framework to increase and improve their abilities in their application development processes. The framework is consisted out of 5 Levels.
These five levels of maturity define an ordinal scale for measuring the maturity of an organization application development capability. Each maturity level is a well defined evolutionary plateau that comprises a set of processes and goals that when satisfied make a significant addition to the sophistication and capability of an organization processes.
Level 1: The initial level
At the initial level the application development practices are inconsistent. The processes are either non existent or they haven’t been properly assessed. Organizations at the initial level usually lack of stable environment and pay less attention on following any processes that exist.
Level 2: The repeatable level
The primary objective at level 2 is to stabilize project commitment and management control processes. It is crucial first to establish a stable environment that assists the reappearance of successful practices of prior projects.Thus one the objective for achieving level 2 for maturity is to institutionalize effective management processes for projects which will allow organizations to repeat successful practices gained from previous projects (Paulk et al, 1993)
Level 3: The defined Level
At this defined level, the process for planning, developing and maintaining a project is documented. This set of documentation encompasses software engineering processes, management and tracking processes. Through this set of documentation these procedures are integrated in to a coherent common organization application development standard
Level 4: The managed Level
Level 4 can be seen as a measurement process that is measuring the effectiveness of the define process so that they will obtain continues improvement. Thus at this level the organization monitors the defined processes of all active projects collecting metrics for the improvement of the process.
Level 5: The Optimization Level
Al level five which is the highest level of maturity the entire organization is focused on continues process improvement.The organizations major goal her is the prevention of defects. In order for this to be achieved the project teams make a thorough effort to analyze and determine the cause of defects. By deploying the knowledge gained, continues improvement can be produced proactively to evaluate the development of new techniques or processes for potential adoption. Thus the organizatin is learning here.