Since I joined my current workplace I’ve been complaining pretty loudly about our lack of well-defined and consistent software processes, and equally loudly made the claim that we’re at level 1 of the Capability Maturity Model (characterised by ad-hoc processes, with successes due to the heroics of individual people).

After making this claim for four years I am - finally - becoming better educated and have spent the last few days reading The Capability Maturity Model and understanding what it involves at a more detailed level.

And you know what? I was right. We are a level 1 organisation. But - and this is what surprised me and made me realise what a cynic I am - Only barely. With some rigour and standard processes for software estimation I suspect the bulk of the teams and projects would satisfy the requirements for CMM level 2 and be exceptionally close to - if not at - level 3. This has been a nicely-reassuring discovery, and I now have a desire to launch a mission to push for us to reach some consistent point (because I’ve got so much free time [sarcasm]...).

What this consistent point is I think will be only a few small steps from where we are now, and will see us with

1. •Defined ways for attaining - or at least justifying - estimates
   

2. •Defined processes - at a high level - of how we produce software
   

3. •Advice on how to tailor these software processes to specific projects
   

I think that this will place us well with respect to CMM level 3, giving us a level of maturity in our software processes that will (in theory) remove the dependence on individual people and provide enough consistency to be confident that we’re doing reasonably good stuff across the board.

So how can I do that? If you’ve got any suggestions I’d love to hear them!