re level in article c sy s x cs cmu edu tm msu edu tom writes nick haines sez given that i ve heard the shuttle software rated as level in maturity i strongly doubt that this having lots of bugs is the case level out of how many what are the different levels i ve never heard of this rating system anyone care to clue me in this is a rating system used by arpa and other organisations to measure the maturity of a software process i e the entire process by which software gets designed written tested delivered supported etc see managing the software process by watts s humphrey addison wesley an excellent software engineering text the levels of software process maturity are initial repeatable defined managed optimizing the levels are approximately characterized as follows no statistically software process control have no statistical basis for estimating how large software will be how long it will take to produce how expensive it will be or how reliable it will be most software production is at this level stable process with statistical controls rigorous project management having done something once can do it again projects are planned in detail and there is software configuration management and quality assurance the process is defined and understood implementation is consistent this includes things like software inspection a rigorous software testing framework more configuration management and typically a software engineering process group within the project statistical information on the software is systematically gathered and analysed and the process is controlled on the basis of this information software quality is measured and has goals defects are prevented the process is automated software contracts are effective and certified nick haines nickh cmu edu
