Understanding and Leveraging a Supplier's CMMI Efforts: A Guidebook for Acquirers

This guidebook is designed to help acquisition organizations benefit from their suppliers’ use of CMMI for Development, which is a collection of best practices that addresses product development and maintenance activities throughout the product lifecycle. This guidebook also helps acquisition organizations avoid problems that can result from unrealistic expectations. High capability and maturity level ratings alone do not guarantee program success. This guidebook helps clarify what those ratings can and cannot do for a development program. It describes how acquirers can • interpret suppliers’ claims of achieving a CMMI rating • request, understand, interpret, and use supplier appraisal results, and • apply methods that leverage a supplier’s process improvement initiatives