JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING 27, 213-226 (2011) 213 On Improving CMMI in an Immature World of Software Development * JING-CHIOU LIOU Department of Computer Science Kean University Union, NJ 07083, U.S.A. During the last decade, software engineering researchers have tried to identify the success and obstacle factors to the software development. Conclusions from many of the researches related to the issue show that software process is one of the most important subjects contributing into the success or failure to the software development. Among the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), the ISO9000 series, Total Quality Man- agement, and other best process practices, the CMMI is the one specially focusing on the software development. However, as evolving from the Capability Maturity Model for Software (SW-CMM), the CMMI has inherited some process issues that can severely de- grade the effectiveness of process maturity of an organization. In this paper, we demon- strate some of the issues existing in current version of the CMMI. The upward only ma- turity level certification method is a major issue. Another major issue for the CMMI is its lack of process practice(s) for organizations and their suppliers that have higher maturity level than they do. Some possible remedies for those issues are also proposed to improve the CMMI. Keywords: CMMI, software process improvement, SDLC, rapid development, quality 1. INTRODUCTION Software development organizations are facing more challenges and difficulties to- day as the complexities of software applications significantly increasing, the technologies of programming languages rapidly changing, and the design patterns and tools constantly modifying. In addition to required training that helps the staffs to improve their skills, software engineering plays a major role on modern software development. Software en- gineering helps a software development organization to have better management on its projects, provides a means for quality assurance, reduces the cost for production mainte- nance, as well as establish statistical process control for process improvement. 1.1 Background on Software Process Management and Improvement There are some existing standards or guidelines to help software development or- ganizations to establish the processes that suit their needs. The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) [1], the ISO9000 series [2], and Total Quality Management [3] are well known parts of the process management and improvement. Among them, the CMMI is the one specially focusing on the software development. The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) evolved from the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) [4]. The concept of the CMM started at late 1980s and appeared to the public when Watts Humphrey [5] published his book “Managing the Software Received February 3, 2009; revised August 20 & November 13, 2009; accepted March 27, 2010. Communicated by Jonathan Lee.