Strengths and Weaknesses of Maturity Driven Process Improvement Effort

In the recent decades most of the big organizations have adopted maturity driven process improvement efforts (MDPI). Most of these efforts have been inspired of maturity models like the CMM (capability maturity model). The maturity of an organizationpsilas processes is measured through its maturity level. An organization availed a high maturity level is considered more trustworthy In this competitive business era making software process improvement (SPI) happen is a challenge for small organizations. The statistics provided by Software Engineering Institute (SEI) for software community striving for SPI by using CMM/CMM Iindicates that a large number of companies fail to achieve their process improvement goals. SPI efforts have mostly been prolonged, expensive, and not often delivered the effects back to the organizations in the same dimension as investigations.We wonder WHY? This research paper investigates strengths and weaknesses of maturity driven process improvement (e.g. CMM). The case studies in extant SPI literature are studied and focus group is used for data collection.The study suggests that process improvement initiatives should be tailored addressing organizational needs instead of blindly pursuing maturity models prescriptions.Furthermore, it is suggested to have an inception phase prior to an SPI initiative to decide whether a maturity driven process improvement approach should be opted or an effect driven process improvement approach.