Comparing ISO/IEC 12207 and CMMI-DEV: Towards a mapping of ISO/IEC 15504-7

Software process improvement is a planned, managed and controlled effort which aims to enhance the capability of the software development processes of an organization. In particular, SPI often involves process reference models, process assessment methods and models that guide process improvement though specific standards such as the ISO and CMMI families. Recently, growing interest has been shown towards the need for harmonization of different improvement technologies with the aim of presenting an integrated vision about the standards. In this sense this paper presents a comparison between the process areas of CMMI-DEV and the processes described in the latest version of ISO/IEC 12207:2008. Based on these results we investigate the relationship between the CMMI-DEV and ISO/IEC 15504-7 models with the aim of identifying the degree of coverage of CMMI-DEV maturity levels in relation to ISO/IEC 15504-7.