If you have reviewed or used a CMMI model before, you will quickly recognize the CMMI concepts discussed and the best practices presented. As always, the improvements that the CMMI Product Team made to CMMI for the V1.3 release were driven by user input. Change requests were carefully considered, analyzed, and implemented.

Some significant improvements you can expect in CMMI-DEV, V1.3 include the following:

· High maturity process areas are significantly improved to reflect industry best practices, including a new specific goal and several new specific practices in the process area that was renamed from Organizational Innovation and Deployment (OID) to Organizational Performance Management (OPM).

· Improvements were made to the model architecture that simplify the use of multiple models.

· Informative material was improved, including revising the engineering practices to reflect industry best practice and adding guidance for organizations that use Agile methods.

· Glossary definitions and model terminology were improved to enhance the clarity, accuracy, and usability of the model.

· Level 4 and 5 generic goals and practices were eliminated as well as capability levels 4 and 5 to appropriately focus high maturity on the achievement of business objectives, which is accomplished by applying capability level 1-3 to the high maturity process areas (Causal Analysis and Resolution, Quantitative Project Management, Organizational Performance Management, and Organizational Process Performance).

For a more complete and detailed list of improvements, see http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/tools/cmmiv1-3/.