Beyond Service Management: The Next Performance Advantage for All Disciplines

The majority of the worldwide economy is service, and the conversion of processes and functions into services has dominated software and other engineering thinking for the past several years. The technical approaches necessary to use a service approach are only part of the challenge. Service management practices that began in traditional service disciplines are also potential performance enhancers for an enormous variety of work, including information technology and engineering of all sorts. What has become clear in the first three years since the release of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) for Services (CMMI-SVC) is that it may be the most broadly applicable of the three CMMI models, and can be used to support improvements in the management of development, leading to higher quality and better business results.