For years, many companies have expended countless dollars and painful hours to comply with the various requirements of ISO 9001. Now, some of these companies are being asked to meet the provisions of Carnegie Mellon’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi). In its former guise as CMM, Carnegie Mellon’s program was often relegated to the software department. But the CMMi version is more comprehensive, addressing many aspects of a company’s operation. Many CEOs, upon learning of these new provisions, must have groaned, “Oh no. Not again!”

However, they may find comfort in the notion that both CMMi and ISO 9001 start with the same basic premise of how a well-run company should operate. It turns out that many of CMMi’s provisions correspond to ISO 9001 requirements. For example, Provision SP 1.1 of Requirements Management from CMMi covers the understanding of requirements. Section 7.2.1 of ISO 9001 covers the determination of requirements related to the product.

The following table shows how CMMi provisions might be addressed by an existing procedure written for ISO 9001. The left column shows the CMMi provision and the corresponding text for that provision. The right column shows an analogous ISO 9001 requirement and an example of text that could be used to meet the ISO 9001 requirement. The same example text meets the provision of CMMi with little or no alteration.

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