The systems engineering capability maturity model: where to start?

The systems engineering capability maturity model is a tool designed to help companies measure and improve their system engineering processes. The architecture of the model is designed to provide the user with a lot of flexibility, and to not be overly prescriptive with regards to how companies should structure their improvement plans. However, the result is that the systems engineering capability maturity model can appear overly complex, leaving potential users confused and unable to develop an effective plan of attack for deploying the model within their own companies. By analyzing the data within the systems engineering capability maturity model one can organize the model content by level of difficulty or complexity. The author has organized the model content into five stages of difficulty, termed improvement stages. Organizations can use these improvement stages as an additional data point or as guidance when they are evaluating or improving systems engineering processes