Date of Award

12-1994

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

First Advisor

Freda Stohrer, PhD

Second Advisor

Pat Lawlis, PhD

Abstract

The Software Engineering Institute's (SEl's) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is to measure an organization's software development process maturity. The Department of Defense (DoD) has model with the belief that a more mature software development process will result in a more successful software subject. Although there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence supporting this presumed correlation, there is empirical evidence. Thus, the goal of our research was to determine the nature of the correlation, if any, :ware process maturity and software project success, where process maturity is based on a CMM rating and success based on the parameters of cost and schedule. To investigate this correlation we identified software unique aimed CMM rating information on the contractor, collected cost and schedule data from a time frame and schedule of the rating, and interviewed project personnel to collect project context information. Using plots of cost performance versus rating level and nonparametric statistical techniques we found that, within our dataset, a correlation does exist between software development process maturity and project performance. The nature of this appears to be improved cost and schedule performance with higher software process maturity.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GSS-LAR-94D-2

DTIC Accession Number

ADA288890

Comments

The authors' respective Vita pages are omitted.

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Logistics and Acquisition Management of the Air Force Institute of Technology.

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