| This work describes the construction of a software engineering work environment supportive of the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM). The CMM is examined, and representative software engineering methods and tools corresponding to each key CMM process are identified. These methods and tools are necessary for advancing from one maturity level to the next. Although the CMM increases quality, by virtue of adding more and more development/maintenance tasks at each level, it also increases the duration of the software engineering lifecycle. To counteract this, a supportive software engineering environment (SEE) is required to (a) assist development teams in applying new practices, and (b) assist management in tracking and overseeing projects as prescribed by the CMM. The European Computer Manufacturer's Association SEE Reference Model is synthesized and used to evaluate the capabilities necessary at each CMM maturity level to build such a SEE. VI, a Visual Multi-Model (VMM) based SEE is proposed to address the shortcomings of current software engineering environments. This work culminates by applying an extended form of VMM, VMM+, to a fundamental software engineering process and demonstrating the maturation of this process as it progresses along the CMM path. |
