EG&G Dahlgren received a Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level 2 Rating on March 12, 2002.

The CMM was developed to help identify process areas that reduce business risk for the customers and suppliers of software or software-related services. It was created by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a Federally Funded Research Center within Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. The CMM is being used successfully by an increasing number of companies and government organizations as a blue print for process maturity measurement and process improvement planning. This model is used by organizations to determine their status in terms of "process maturity" and to incorporate practices to diagnose and increase their process maturity.

The CMM is made up of 5 Levels that characterize process maturity ranging from Level 1, Initial (ad hoc) to Level 5, Optimizing. The benefits realized by operating in a CMM Level 2 framework are numerous and include the following:

• Improved management visibility into technical status and progress
  
• Higher customer satisfaction due to project control and communication
  
• Increased ability to manage and control schedule and cost
  
• Successful avoidance or reduction of risks through risk identification and risk management
  
• Improved management insight into process and policy compliance through quality assurance activities

Our CMM Maturity Level 2 rating is the result of a unanimous decision reached by an assessment team that conducted a Software Capability Evaluation (SCE) at the EG&G Dahlgren facility March 4 – 12, 2002. An SEI Authorized Lead Evaluator with Northrop Grumman Information Technology Corp. led the team of SCE-certified assessors.. Four programs were assessed in the areas of project planning, project tracking and oversight, requirements management, subcontract management and quality assurance.

The Level 2 rating is a noteworthy accomplishment for EG&G. It is the result of hard work performed by a number of individuals in the Engineering Process Group (EPG). This group was chartered at Dahlgren in 1999 to establish a CMM framework for the four programs evaluated in March. The EPG implements the process improvement initiatives and policies set forth by the Dahlgren Management Steering Group (MSG).

The Engineering Process Group looks forward to working on other projects within EG&G to propagate the CMM culture, to achieve Level 2 maturity throughout the organization, and to reach CMM Level 3 maturity within the next 18 months.