ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Software Engineering Institute’s (SEI’s) defined approaches to CMMI-based appraisals. Appraisals, assessments, and evaluations are by no means a new subject. There are a number of appraisal methods* that have been developed to measure and evaluate an organization against the family of Capability Maturity Models (CMMs) in addition to other models and standards. A community of appraisers, assessors, and evaluators has grown around these methods. The CMMI product suite introduces some new concepts, but mostly builds on the history of these previous methods and the best practices of the assessor and evaluator community. There are three classes of CMMI Appraisal Methods: Class A, Class B, and Class C.
