Maintenance group achieves highest software certification Published July 17, 2006 By Bill Orndorff 309th Maintenance Wing Public Affairs HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- Meeting and exceeding standards for software development helped the 309th Software Maintenance Group here achieve the highest level of certification issued by industry and the Department of Defense. The group received a Capability Maturity Model Integration — CMMI — Level 5 certification by the Software Engineering Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the DoD and operated by Carnegie Mellon University. "CMMI can be thought of as a collection of 'best-practices' that, when used, have helped organizations produce high quality software products at or below costs and on or ahead of schedule," said Randy Hill, 309 SMXG director. "The CMMI helps us do our work because it provides a model of the practices that an organization would perform if it were doing all the right things. It doesn’t guarantee our success on a particular project, but it makes the probability of success much more likely and predictable. "Another benefit of using the CMMI is that it is a community-wide agreed-upon set of practices. It makes it easier for us to interface with potential partners and customers when we are speaking the same language and have the same expectations. The CMMI helps to make this interface more standard." Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI) appraisals are required by the institute to be led by authorized lead appraisers. For the 309 SMXG appraisal, the lead was Dr. Gene Miluk who helped develop both the CMMI model and the SCAMPI appraisal method. The 12-member team, including Dr. Miluk, did a readiness review of the 309 SMXG May 8-12 and conducted appraisal interviews and ratings June 5-15. Other team members came from Eglin AFB, Fla., China Lake Naval Air Weapon Center, Calif., and the 309 SMXG. "SCAMPI is a method for carrying out appraisals of organizations using the CMMI as a measuring-stick," Mr. Hill said. "In the SCAMPI method there are three classes of appraisals -- A, B and C -- with corresponding levels of rigor. The SCAMPI A appraisal -- which was done on the 309 SMXG -- is the most rigorous version, and is used for obtaining a maturity level rating in the CMMI." The appraisal team looked at engineering, project management, process management and support processes, and identified four "best practices" demonstrated by 309 SMXG: * Outstanding management support for process improvement; * Organization infrastructure for process improvement such as long-term process improvement focus, quality assurance auditing functions, senior project managers who mentor less experienced project managers, use of process action teams to identify and solve specific process problems, and other management support; * Mature processes; and * Use of innovative tools. Level 5 is the highest level in CMMI and the rating is effective for three-years. And, the 309th SMXG rating is somewhat elite among organizations that have been evaluated. "Recent data from the Software Engineering Institute indicates that of all government and military agencies that have had a SCAMPI A appraisal performed, only 4.3 percent have been rated Maturity Level 5," said Norm LeClair, 309 SMXG deputy director. "For all types of organizations combined (commercial, government contractor, government agency) only 18.4 percent were rated Level 5."