Levels are used in CMMI to describe an evolutionary path recommended for an organization that wants to improve the processes it uses to develop and maintain its products and services. Levels can also be the outcome of the rating activity of appraisals.[1] Appraisals can be performed for organizations that comprise entire (usually small) companies, or for smaller groups such as a group of projects or a division within a company.

CMMI supports two improvement paths. One path enables organizations to incrementally improve processes corresponding to an individual process area (or process areas) selected by the organization. The other path enables organizations to improve a set of related processes by incrementally addressing successive sets of process areas.

These two improvement paths are associated with the two types of levels that correspond to the two representations discussed in Chapter 1. For the continuous representation, we use the term “capability level.” For the staged representation, we use the term “maturity level.”

Regardless of which representation you select, the concept of levels is the same. Levels characterize improvement from an ill-defined state to a state that uses quantitative information to determine and manage improvements that are needed to meet an organization’s business objectives.

To reach a particular level, an organization must satisfy all of the appropriate goals of the process area or set of process areas that are targeted for improvement, regardless of whether it is a capability or a maturity level.

Both representations also provide ways to implement process improvement to achieve business objectives. Both representations provide the same essential content and use the same model components.