Using structured benchmarking to fast-track CMM process improvement

Sikorsky Aircraft designs and manufactures helicopters. In today´s environment of glass cockpits, fly-by-wire control systems, and special missions, we are also in the integration business-which, from this article´s perspective, translates into embedded software. We develop large systems in-house, such as the Comanche Mission Equipment Package, comprising hundreds of thousands of lines of code, and we are deeply involved in enhancing large legacy systems for our Black Hawk and Seahawk platforms. Sikorsky Aircraft in pursuit of a Capability Maturity Model rating, determined that software benchmarking would help its process improvement and assessment effort. The article describes how Sikorsky prepared for benchmarking trips, structured its questionnaire, aggregated results and evaluated lessons learned