EDS unit gets top CMMI rating

EDS' Centre for Enabling Client Excellence, part of its U.S. Government organization, has earned a Capability Maturity Model Integration rating of 5, the highest possible.

The rating measures the degree of standardization and documentation that an organization uses in its internal processes.

"This is a major achievement for our government team," said Al Edmonds, vice president of global sales and client solutions in EDS' government division. "We now have the ability to leverage these optimal practices across the entire organization."

TeraQuest Metrics Inc., the company that EDS officials hired to perform the CMMI assessment, highly rated the CECE for being strongly consistent in its corporate processes, tools, methods, techniques and community networks. TeraQuest officials also liked EDS' peer-review process, according to EDS officials.

CMMI is a successor to the older Capability Maturity Model, which was divided into several specialty areas. CMMI integrates software development skills with project management abilities in its assessment.

The National Defense Industrial Association's systems engineering division spearheaded the development of the CMMI standard with an industry consortium, the Defense Department and Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute contributing, said Robert Rassa, chairman of the NDIA systems engineering division and co-chairman of the CMMI Project Steering Group.