Reading Notes: Professional Software Development (Part 3)

Capability Maturity Model

• One study shows that:
  
  • 75% of organizations improve from Level 1 to Level 2 within 3.5 years (median of 22 months).
  • 75% of organizations improve from Level 2 to Level 3 within 2.5 years (median of 21 months).
• Another study shows that:
  
  • Teams at Level 1 routinely underestimate development costs. 50% of the projects were up to 100% over-budget. 25% of projects spent 4-5 times the original budget.
  • Teams at Level 2 has most projects slightly over or under budget, with a very small minority (something like 10%) of projects finishing at 2-3 times the original budget.
  • Teams at Level 3 had all projects finishing within a small range of the budget. Those that went over-budget did not exceed the budget by more than 25%.

This means that a team operating at a higher maturity level allows for better overall business planning and execution.