A Technical History of the SEI

Expanding the CMMI Product Suite to the Acquisition Area of
Interest
The Challenge: Meeting Acquisition
Needs with the CMMI Product Suite
The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
product suite was spawned from discussions between an
SEI sponsor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense
(OSD) and the SEI. CMMI was a way to portray integrated
approaches to development for both systems and
software engineers. Its creation stimulated consideration
of companion approaches for other areas of interest that
would share many of the core concerns of project management,
process management, and support. In the mid-
1990s, the U.S. Army requested a model to cover software
acquisition [Ferguson 1994].
A Solution: CMMI-ACQ – A Full
Acquisition Solution
The View from Others
At the GAO, we have been using
the CMMI-ACQ model to evaluate
federal agencies’ acquisition efforts.
This use of CMMI-ACQ enables
the GAO to evaluate acquisition
activities across the
government using a common methodology.
– Madhav Panwar, Senior
Level Technologist, GAO
[Gallagher 2011]
CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-
ACQ) enables a predictable, consistent,
and reliable process for
defining the requirements, defining
an acquisition strategy, and capturing
the best sources.
– Anthony W. Spehar, VP
Missile Systems, Northrop
Grumman Aerospace
Systems [Gallagher 2011]
CMMI-ACQ doesn’t support the
practice of saying ‘I’m going to
hand this to you, and I’m gone.’
Instead, it’s about how you interact
with your supplier every day to
make sure it’s done correctly
– Ralph Szygenda, General
Motors CIO, quoted in
Information Week
[Weir 2007]
The initial thinking by the OSD sponsor for a CMMI version
for acquisition was that a brief approach would be
best, and this led to creation of the “Acquisition Module”
[Bernard 2005]. The desire for a full CMMI version that
allowed both training and assessment of progress came
from industry. The CIO of General Motors had orchestrated
a new approach to IT software at GM, where all the
software that ran each sector’s operations would be procured
rather than internally developed. But the CIO recognized
the value that process discipline would have
within his organizations around the world, even though
they were acquiring rather than actually developing the
software-intensive IT systems under his responsibility.
With the SEI’s support, a GM team created a draft version
that was called a CMMI for Outsourcing [Hoffman
2006]. In 2006, GM completed the draft; and a government,
industry, and SEI team was formed to develop the
CMMI-ACQ product suite. An advisory board was created
to recognize the needs of both government and industry
for the final product. Team leadership was shared between an OSD staff member and an
SEI project manager. DoD acquisition expertise included two professors at the Defense Acquisi-
CMU/SEI-2016-SR-027 | SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INSTITUTE | CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY 133
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