Managerial and Organizational Assumptions in the CMM's

Thinking about improving the management of software development in software firms is dominated by one approach: the capability maturity model devised and administered at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Though CMM, and its replacement CMMI are widely known and used, there is little convincing research connecting widespread benefits in profitability or improved software products to CMMI improvement initiatives. There are also a number of well understood difficulties and limitations with the approach reported in the literature. This article examines, through the lens of modern management theory, the assumptions behind the CMMI approach. Taking a textual analysis approach focusing on the writings from Carnegie Mellon, it characterises eight interlocking management and organisational assumptions underpinning CMMI. These powerful interlocking assumptions are typical of management thinking about large production and manufacturing organisations (particularly in America) in the late industrial age. Many of the difficulties reported with CMMI can be attributed basing practice on these assumptions in organisations which have different cultures and management traditions, perhaps in different countries operating different economic and social models. Characterizing CMMI in this way opens the door to another question: are there other sets of organisational and management assumptions which would be better suited to other types of organisations operating in other cultural contexts?