CMMI has been around for a very long time...
The first formal release (V1.1) took place in 2000 – over 25 years ago, but the CMMI story started before then in the late 80’s and early 90’s with the release of the original Capability Maturity Model – the Software CMM (SW-CMM). The SW-CMM came about as one of the main responses to a DoD sponsored initiative to look at why large, government (in particular, defence) contracts relating to software and IT systems were generally late, over-budget and of lower than expected quality. This response involved setting up the ‘Software Engineering Institute’ (SEI) – a federally funded department within Carnegie Mellon University – to look at ways of establishing a more disciplined ‘engineering’ approach to software development. The Software CMM was developed as part of this work and the principle of a muti-level model of organizational capability and maturity found favour and was applied to other subject areas, in particular the discipline of Systems Engineering (SECAM - EIA/IS-731) and integrated project delivery (IPD-CMM).
​Because these models shared a common heritage, there was considerable overlap between them and so the SEI instigated the Capability Maturity Model – Integration project (Or CMMI) to bring together these popular but limited CMMs. The result was CMMI V1.1 released in 2002.
Since its initial release, CMMI has been periodically refined and updated. The industry within which CMMI operates is continuously evolving and developing and consequently what constitutes ‘best-practice’ also needs to be updated.
In 2010, the SEI made a significant update to the CMMI with it’s version 1.3 release which introduced the concept of three separate but related ‘constellations’. Now the CMMI didn’t just cover product development; two additional new constellations introduced the CMMI principles to the subjects of Service Delivery/Management and Acquisitions.
V1.3 was one of the longest serving versions of the CMMI, lasting around 8 years. During this period, although the model itself remained fairly static, the management of the model underwent something of a change with the formation of the ‘CMMI Institute’ that was set up specifically by the SEI to separate stewardship of the CMMI from its other products and projects. Not long after this, the ‘CMMI Institute’ (and hence the CMMI itself) was acquired by ISACA.
In 2018, ISACA released the next major version of CMMI, version 2.0 in which a number of significant architectural changes were introduced into the model. One of the most significant of these changes was the move away from a traditional document based model and the transition to an on-line web-based model viewer which presented a continuously updated version of the model in a more browsable and accessible form
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This version lasted for 5 years until in 2023, the current version, version 3.0 was released. Unlike version 2.0 which majored on structural issues of the model itself, V3.0 took a very similar role to the original V1.1 release; it incorporated a number of other separate CMM’s into the main CMMI product set (most notably the People-CMM, Data Management CMM and Software and Security Models), along with other areas of special interest such as the ‘Virtual Working Toolkit’ that had been created in response to the COVID pandemic. These specialist areas formed the new ‘Domains’ and the elements of the model were now split into ‘Core’ areas that are common across all domains and domain specific areas that apply only to the specific domains in question.
CMMI continues to evolve and adapt to the changing industry. June 2026 will see the release of an AI Maturity Model supplement to the model which will provide guidance and best practice on how to use and manage AI approaches within organizations and further areas of specialisation are being developed all the while, which may ultimately be absorbed into future versions of the CMMI.
