The People Capability Maturity Model^® (People CMM^®) adapts the maturity framework of the Capability Maturity Model® for Software (CMM^®) [Paulk 95], to managing and developing an organization’s work force. The motivation for the People CMM is to radically improve the ability of software organizations to attract, develop, motivate, organize, and retain the talent needed to continuously improve software development capability. The People CMM is designed to allow software organizations to integrate work-force improvement with software process improvement programs guided by the SW-CMM. The People CMM can also be used by any kind of organization as a guide for improving their people-related and work-force practices.

Based on the best current practices in the fields such as human resources and organizational development, the People CMM provides organizations with guidance on how to gain control of their processes for managing and developing their work force. The People CMM helps organizations to characterize the maturity of their work-force practices, guide a program of continuous work-force development, set priorities for immediate actions, integrate work-force development with process improvement, and establish a culture of software engineering excellence. It describes an evolutionary improvement path from ad hoc, inconsistently performed practices, to a mature, disciplined development of the knowledge, skills, and motivation of the work force, just as the CMM describes an evolutionary improvement path for the software processes within an organization.

The People CMM consists of five maturity levels that lay successive foundations for continuously improving talent, developing effective teams, and successfully managing the people assets of the organization. Each maturity level is a well-defined evolutionary plateau that institutionalizes a level of capability for developing the talent within the organization.

Except for Level 1, each maturity level is decomposed into several key process areas that indicate the areas an organization should focus on to improve its workforce capability. Each key process area is described in terms of the key practices that contribute to satisfying its goals. The key practices describe the infrastructure and activities that contribute most to the effective implementation and institutionalization of the key process area.

The five maturity levels of the People CMM are:

1) Initial.

2) Repeatable. The key process areas at Level 2 focus on instilling basic discipline into workforce

activities. They are:

• Work Environment

• Communication & Coordination

• Staffing

• Performance Management

• Training and Development

• Compensation

3) Defined. The key process areas at Level 3 address issues surrounding the identification of the organization’s primary competencies and aligning its people management activities with them. They are:

• Competency Based Practices

• Workforce Planning

• Competency Development

• Career Development

• Competency Analysis

• Participatory Culture

• Workgroup Development

4) Managed. The key process areas at Level 4 focus on quantitatively managing organizational growth in people management capabilities and in establishing competency-based teams. They are:

• Competency Based Assets

• Mentoring

• Competency Integration

• Empowered Workgroups

• Quantitative Performance Management

• Organizational Capablity Management

5) Optimizing. The key process areas at Level 5 cover the issues that address continuous improvement of methods for developing competency, at both the organizational and the individual level. They are:

• Continuous Workforce Innovation

• Organizational Performance Alignment

• Continuous Capability Improvement

The Software Engineering Institute has released three documents describing the People CMM. These documents describe the People CMM, and the key practices that correspond to each maturity level of the People CMM, and gives information on how to apply the People CMM in guiding organizational improvement. It contains an elaboration of what is meant by work-force capability (i.e., maturity) at each maturity level, and describes how the People CMM can be applied by an organization in two primary ways: as a standard for assessing work-force practices, and as a guide in planning and implementing improvement activities.