E44’s Software Center of Excellence (SwCoE) has been appraised at level 3 of the CMMI Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). E44’s SwCoE is the only entity at Newport News Shipbuilding that is CMMI-3 appraised for meeting standards for software development and test programs. The independent appraisal was performed by Virginia-based ANTS Corporation. This marks E44’s second successful CMMI appraisal; the first occurred in 2015.

The CMMI Institute is part of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association. CMMI was developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, initiated by the U.S. Department of Defense, to assess the quality and capability of software contractors. CMMI is a capability improvement model approach that provides thousands of organizations with the essential elements of effective processes that ultimately improve their performance.

A CMMI level 3 appraisal demonstrates improved performance to meet the needs of NNS customers. At a level 3 maturity, processes in the SwCoE at NNS are assured to be well characterized and understood, and are described in standards, procedures, tools, and methods. A software engineering organization at this level consistently delivers quality products on time and within budget, core principles of the SwCoE’s business objectives.

The SwCoE’s Andy Moburg and Genevieve Gilliland led the appraisal. “This appraisal does not represent a ‘finish line’ but reflects an unbiased external opinion that our efforts support creating a quality product for our customer and that we are on the correct path. From here we will build upon this foundation in our journey of continuous process improvement,” said Andrew Limbaugh, one of SwCoE’s four core managers.

Moburg and Gilliland are excited to engage in sustainment activities moving forward, including expansion of the continuous process improvement beyond the SwCoE.