CMMI® and OPM3® as Maturity Appraisal and Improvement Models: Conference Paper

The purpose of this paper is to survey the SEI's CMMI model and the PMI's OPM3 model as being used in appraising organizations based on maturity. Organizations seeking appraisal of their current maturity, either for internal strategic goals, or for external commercial and trade requirements, will consider basing their maturity assessment and improvement efforts on a global framework which was developed for satisfying these organizational improvement needs. Most well‐known models currently are CMMI (with several constellations) from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University, and the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) from the Project Management Institute (PMI), among other models from other providers. In this paper we will explore these two models from maturity assessment and improvement point of view. We will highlight differences, and show the applicability of each model, while opposing components and characteristics of each model to clarify how it is intended to be applied in actual use. We will consider scope of each model, components and artifacts, appraisal settings (resources and appraisal methods), and how improvement planning is done in each. Finally, we will have a look at how the two models can be integrated in application. This paper is intended to be an executive summary and will not introduce either model in details as this is out of scope of the intended discussion. Readers are referred to relevant resources for more information about the respective model.

This paper was published in the proceedings of IPMA 26th World Congress, held in Crete, Greece, Oct. 29 - 31, 2012.