Only by a miracle can a Level -2 organisation produce any useable software. As Level -2 organisations rarely get beyond specification they pin their hopes on automatically generating a program from that specification.
- Anthony Finkelstein, Software Process Immaturity Model
LLM’s are doing an impressive job of getting us from conversations to requirements to specifications to code, but when I look at that diagram, I have a visceral sense of what 2025’s Level -2 is.
When I first heard that the SEI had a lesser-known counterpart to its Capability Maturity Model (CMM) called People CMM (P-CMM), I had to DuckDuckGo if it was a joke.
It isn’t, except in the same sense that CMM-I is a kind of cruel joke.
P-CMM uses the same 5 levels as the SEI CMM to “systematically transform chaotic workforce practices into strategic capability development” across 22 process area. Without any sense of irony, the process professes to “address critical people issues in your organization”, then immediately dropping the word “people” in favor of the terms “workforce” and “resource.”
Businesses have important reasons to establish targets independent of software estimates. But the fact that a target is desirable or even mandatory does not necessarily mean that it is achievable.
— Steve McConnell, Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
We need precise language about what we want, what we predict, and what we promise.