This document is available on the SEI Web site[1] and serves as a guide for improvement of organizational processes. It is organized into three main parts:

·   Part One—About CMMI for Development

·   Part Two—Generic Goals and Generic Practices, and the Process Areas

·   Part Three—The Appendices and Glossary

Part One, “About CMMI for Development,” consists of five chapters:

·   Chapter 1, “Introduction,” offers a broad view of CMMI and the CMMI for Development constellation. It introduces you to the concepts of process improvement, and describes the history of models used for process improvement and different process improvement approaches.

·   Chapter 2, “Process Area Components,” describes all of the components of the CMMI for Development process areas.

·   Chapter 3, “Tying It All Together,” assembles the model components and explains the concepts of maturity levels and capability levels.

·   Chapter 4, “Relationships among Process Areas,” provides insight into the meaning and interactions of the CMMI for Development process areas.

·   Chapter 5, “Using CMMI Models,” describes paths to adoption and use of CMMI for process improvement and benchmarking.

Part Two, “Generic Goals and Generic Practices, and the Process Areas,” contains all of the CMMI for Development constellation’s required and expected components. It also contains related informative components, including component names, subpractices, notes, and typical work products.

Part Two contains 23 sections. The first section contains the generic goals and practices, including a description of how they are used and how they relate to the process areas. The remaining 22 sections each represent one of the CMMI for Development process areas.[2] To make these process areas easy to find, they are organized alphabetically by process area acronym. Each section contains descriptions of goals, best practices, and examples.

Part Three, “The Appendices and Glossary,” consists of four information resources:

·   Appendix A, “References,” contains references you can use to locate documented sources of information such as reports, process improvement models, industry standards, and books that are related to CMMI for Development.

·   Appendix B, “Acronyms,” defines the acronyms used herein.

·   Appendix C, “CMMI for Development Project Participants,” contains lists of people and their organizations who participated in the development of CMMI for Development, Version 1.2.

·   The “Glossary” defines many of the terms used in CMMI.