Editing Capability Maturity Model (section)

===Development at Software Engineering Institute===
Active development of the model by the US Department of Defense Software Engineering Institute (SEI) began in 1986 when Humphrey joined the [[Software Engineering Institute]] located at Carnegie Mellon University in [[Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]] after retiring from IBM. At the request of the U.S. Air Force he began formalizing his Process Maturity Framework to aid the U.S. Department of Defense in evaluating the capability of software contractors as part of awarding contracts.

The result of the Air Force study was a model for the military to use as an objective evaluation of software subcontractors' process capability maturity. Humphrey based this framework on the earlier [[Quality Management Maturity Grid]] developed by [[Philip B. Crosby]] in his book "Quality is Free".<ref name=crosby79qif>{{cite book
 |last1=Crosby |first1=P. B. |author-link1=Philip B. Crosby
 |title=Quality is Free
 |url=https://archive.org/details/qualityisfreeart00cros |url-access=registration |location=New York
 |publisher=[[New American Library]]
 |year=1979
 |isbn=0-451-62247-2
}}</ref> Humphrey's approach differed because of his unique insight that organizations mature their processes in stages based on solving process problems in a specific order. Humphrey based his approach on the staged evolution of a system of software development practices within an organization, rather than measuring the maturity of each separate development process independently. The CMMI has thus been used by different organizations as a general and powerful tool for understanding and then improving general business process performance.

Watts Humphrey's Capability Maturity Model (CMM) was published in 1988<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Humphrey | first1 = W. S. | author-link1 = Watts Humphrey | title = Characterizing the software process: A maturity framework | doi = 10.1109/52.2014 | journal = [[IEEE Software]] | volume = 5 | issue = 2 | pages = 73–79 | date=March 1988 | s2cid = 1008347 | url = http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/87tr011.pdf }}</ref> and as a book in 1989, in ''Managing the Software Process''.<ref name=watts89msp>{{cite book
 |last1=Humphrey |first1=W. S. |author-link1=Watts Humphrey
 |title=Managing the Software Process
 |year=1989
 |location=Reading, Mass.
 |publisher=[[Addison-Wesley]]
 |series=SEI series in software engineering
 |isbn=0-201-18095-2
}}</ref>

Organizations were originally assessed using a process maturity questionnaire and a Software Capability Evaluation method devised by Humphrey and his colleagues at the Software Engineering Institute.

The full representation of the Capability Maturity Model as a set of defined [[process area]]s and practices at each of the five maturity levels was initiated in 1991, with Version 1.1 being published in July 1993.<ref name=sei93cmm/>
The CMM was published as a book<ref name=sei94cmmBook/> in 1994 by the same authors Mark C. Paulk, Charles V. Weber, [[Dr Bill Curtis |Bill Curtis]], and Mary Beth Chrissis.