Dr. Ralf Kneuper

Dr. Ralf Kneuper Consulting
Software Quality Management
and Process Improvement

CMMI and ITIL – A Look at the IT Lifecycle

Published in the Conference Newsletter of the Tenth European Systems and Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG) Conference, 14th June 2005

Two models have recently gained importance in the world of IT management covering different aspects of the IT lifecycle:

• ITIL, the IT Infrastructure Library, describes the management of IT infrastructures.
• CMMI, on the other hand, describes the development and maintenance of products and services, mainly products and services that contain a significant amount of IT.

In spite of their different structure, these two models support each other by covering different aspects of the IT lifecycle. To see how, let us look what happens when a new IT system is needed:

• Requirements are collected and managed (CMMI, Requirements Management) and a functional and technical analysis (CMMI, Requirements Development) is performed, covering, among others, requirements on availability (ITIL, Availability Management) and security (ITIL, Security Management). This implies that intensive cooperation is needed between IT infrastructure management and development.
• The new IT system is developed using the CMMI engineering process areas, such as Technical Solution, Product Integration, Validation and Verification. E.g. Validation will include demonstrating that the system will fulfill its intended use in the planned environment, i.e. in the infrastructure managed using the ITIL processes.
• The developed system is now passed from CMMI Configuration Management (as used in development; small configuration items such as individual files, modules, etc.) to ITIL Configuration Management (as used in administrating the infrastructure; large configuration items – the whole system might only consist of a very small number of CIs).
• During maintenance, the Service Desk (ITIL Incident Management, etc.) will interface with the user and pass bugs and change requests to the development organization.

As this short and incomplete summary shows, a lot of interfacing between the two sides is necessary in order to provide the users with the systems and services they need.