
As a process improvement consultant working extensively with the Capability Maturity Model - Integration, I have discussed the possibility of using CMMI as a tool for improving the processes of many organisations. One issue that I frequently encounter is a perception that CMMI is a tool which is really only appropriate or useful for ‘large’ organizations (The term ‘large’ is suitably abstract and seems usually to be used as shorthand for ‘organizations that are bigger than us’, however there are formalised definitions such as this one:).

This is a long-held view that has been around from the very early days of CMMI, and in fairness it probably arose as a result of the circumstances that originally gave rise to the Capability Maturity Model concept.
The original software CMM was developed as a response to a software development crisis in the early 80’s in which the demand for software systems grew dramatically, but the development processes to adequately support these projects were still in their infancy. This led to cost overruns, delays and erratic quality in the developed systems and prompted the US Air Force to fund a study to try to identify ‘best practice’ which eventually led to the Capability Maturity Model concept.

This study focused on US government/defence contractors, and in particular on the large, expensive, programs where the issues that were being experienced caused the most damage. Hence CMMs (and later CMMI), from their very inception were linked by association with ‘large’ organizations running ‘large’ projects.
Another factor that has doubtless fed this perception in people’s minds is the sheer size of the model. CMMI has always been a large model, and in recent versions, as new ‘domains’ have been introduced, the practice count has increased still further as ‘best practice’ from disciplines such as Safety, Security and Data Management has been added into the model. In the current V3.0 model there are a total of 276 practi