Now more than ever, organizations are increasingly becoming acquirers[1] of needed capabilities by obtaining products and services from suppliers and developing less and less of these capabilities in-house. The intent of this widely adopted business strategy is to improve an organization's operational efficiencies by leveraging suppliers' capabilities to deliver quality solutions rapidly, at lower cost, and with the most appropriate technology.

Acquisition of needed capabilities is challenging because acquirers must take overall accountability for satisfying the user of the needed capability while allowing the supplier to perform the tasks necessary to develop and provide the solution.

According to recent studies, 20 to 25 percent of large information technology (IT) acquisition projects fail within two years and 50 percent fail within five years. Mismanagement, the inability to articulate customer needs, poor requirements definition, inadequate supplier selection and contracting processes, insufficient technology selection procedures, and uncontrolled requirements changes are factors that contribute to project failure. Responsibility is shared by both the supplier and the acquirer. The majority of project failures could be avoided if the acquirer learned how to properly prepare for, engage with, and manage suppliers.

In addition to these challenges, an overall key to a successful acquirer-supplier relationship is communication.

Unfortunately, many organizations have not invested in the capabilities necessary to effectively manage projects in an acquisition environment. Too often acquirers disengage from the project once the supplier is hired. Too late they discover that the project is not on schedule, deadlines will not be met, the technology selected is not viable, and the project has failed.

The acquirer has a focused set of major objectives. These objectives include the requirement to maintain a relationship with the final users of the capability to fully comprehend their needs. The acquirer owns the project, executes overall project management, and is accountable for delivering the needed capabilities to the users. Thus, these acquirer responsibilities may extend beyond ensuring the right capability is delivered by chosen suppliers to include such activities as integrating the overall product or service, transitioning it into operation, and obtaining insight into its appropriateness and adequacy to continue to meet customer needs.

CMMI® for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ) provides an opportunity to avoid or eliminate barriers in the acquisition process through practices and terminology that transcend the interests of individual departments or groups.

This document provides guidance to help the acquirer apply CMMI best practices.

CMMI-ACQ contains 22 process areas. Of those, 16 are CMMI Model Foundation (CMF) process areas that cover process management, project management, and support process areas. More about the CMF is discussed in Chapter 3.

Six process areas focus on practices specific to acquisition addressing agreement management, acquisition requirements development, acquisition technical management, acquisition validation, acquisition verification, and solicitation and supplier agreement development.

All CMMI-ACQ model practices focus on the activities of the acquirer. Those activities include supplier sourcing, developing and awarding supplier agreements, and managing the acquisition of capabilities, including the acquisition of both products and services. Supplier activities are not addressed in this document. Suppliers and acquirers who also develop products and services should consider using the CMMI-DEV model.