People
Capability Maturity Model
Part One The People Capability
Maturity Model: Background,
Concepts, Structure, and Usage
This overview presents an introduction to the People Capability Maturity
Model (People CMM) and the background for developing such a model. It
describes the concepts of a maturity framework and how this framework can
be applied to developing the workforce capability of an organization. The
structure of the P-CMM is described. In addition, advice for interpreting and
using the P-CMM and its practices is provided to help an organization apply
the P-CMM in its setting.
Part One
The Process Maturity Framework 3
Overview of the People CMM 15
People CMM Process Areas 29
The Architecture of the People CMM 47
Interpreting the People CMM 61
Using the People CMM 83
1 The Process Maturity
Framework
People Capability Maturity Model – Version 2
Copyright 2001 by Carnegie Mellon University 3
“When human capital owners [employees] have the upper hand in the market, they do
not behave at all like assets. They behave like owners of a valuable commodity…They are
investors in a business, paying in human capital and expecting a return on their
investment.”
[Davenport 99]
“As other sources of competitive success have become less important, what remains as a
crucial differentiating factor is the organization, its employees, and how it works.”
[Pfeffer 94]
“Successful firms will be those most adept at attracting, developing, and retaining
individuals with the skills, perspectives, and experience necessary to drive a global
business.”
[Ulrich 97a]
“Personnel attributes and human resource activities provide by far the largest source of
opportunity for improving software development productivity.”
[Boehm 81]
“After product size, people factors have the strongest influence in determining the
amount of effort required to develop a software product.”
[Boehm 00]
1.1 What Is the People CMM?
The People Capability Maturity Model
®
(People CMM
®
) is a roadmap for implementing
workforce practices that continuously improve the capability of an organization’s workforce.
Since an organization cannot implement all of the best workforce practices in an afternoon, the
People CMM introduces them in stages. Each progressive level of the People CMM produces a
The Process Maturity Framework
4 People Capability Maturity Model – Version 2
unique transformation in the organization’s culture by equipping it with more powerful practices
for attracting, developing, organizing, motivating, and retaining its workforce. Thus, the People
CMM establishes an integrated system of workforce practices that matures through increasing
alignment with the organization’s business objectives, performance, and changing needs.
The People CMM was first published in 1995 [Curtis 95], and has successfully guided workforce
improvement programs in companies such as Boeing, Ericsson, Lockheed Martin, Novo Nordisk
IT A/S, and Tata Consultancy Services [Vu 01, Martín-Vivaldi 99, Miller 00, Curtis 00, Keeni
00]. Although the People CMM has been designed primarily for application in knowledge-
intense organizations, with appropriate tailoring it can be applied in almost any organizational
setting.
The People CMM’s primary objective is to improve the capability of the workforce. Workforce
capability can be defined as the level of knowledge, skills, and process abilities available for
performing an organization’s business activities. Workforce capability indicates an
organization’s:
❏ readiness for performing its critical business activities,
❏ likely results from performing these business activities, and
❏ potential for benefiting from investments in process improvement or advanced
technology.
In order to measure and improve capability, the workforce in most organizations must be divided
into its constituent workforce competencies. Each workforce competency represents a unique
integration of knowledge, skills, and process abilities acquired through specialized education or
work experience. Strategically, an organization wants to design its workforce to include the
various workforce competencies required to perform the business activities underlying its core
competency [Prahalad 90]. Each of these workforce competencies can be characterized by its
capability—the profile of knowledge, skills, and process abilities available to the organization in
that domain.
The People CMM describes an evolutionary improvement path from ad hoc, inconsistently
performed workforce practices, to a mature infrastructure of practices for continuously elevating
workforce capability. The philosophy implicit the People CMM can be summarized in ten
principles.
1. In mature organizations, workforce capability is directly related to business performance.
2. Workforce capability is a competitive issue and a source of strategic advantage.
3. Workforce capability must be defined in relation to the organization’s strategic business
objectives.
4. Knowledge-intense work shifts the focus from job elements to workforce competencies.
The Process Maturity Framework
People Capability Maturity Model – Version 2 5
5. Capability can be measured and improved at multiple levels, including individuals,
workgroups, workforce competencies, and the organization.
6. An organization should invest in improving the capability of those workforce competencies
that are critical to its core competency as a business.
7. Operational management is responsible for the capability of the workforce.
8. The improvement of workforce capability can be pursued as a process composed from
proven practices and procedures.
9. The organization is responsible for providing improvement opportunities, while individuals
are responsible for taking advantage of them.
10. Since technologies and organizational forms evolve rapidly, organizations must continually
evolve their workforce practices and develop new workforce competencies.
Since the People CMM is an evolutionary framework, it guides organizations in selecting high-
priority improvement actions based on the current maturity of their workforce practices. The
benefit of the People CMM is in narrowing the scope of improvement activities to those vital few
practices that provide the next foundational layer for developing an organization’s workforce. By
concentrating on a focused set of practices and working aggressively to install them,
organizations can steadily improve their workforce and make lasting gains in their performance
and competitiveness.
The People CMM has proven popular because it allows organizations to characterize the
maturity of their workforce practices against a benchmark being used by other organizations.
Many workforce benchmarks focus on employee attitudes and satisfaction rather than workforce
practices. Although attitudes and satisfaction are important predictors of outcomes such as
turnover, they do not always provide the guidance necessary for identifying which practices
should be improved next. In contrast, the staged framework of the People CMM helps
organizations prioritize for their improvement actions. In addition, since the People CMM treats
workforce development as an organizational process, improved workforce practices are easier to
integrate with other process improvement activities.
1.2 Why Do We Need a People CMM?
Forty years ago people feared that technology would reduce the need for educated workers,
leaving large segments of the population unemployed. The opposite occurred. In fact, the
demand for educated workers exceeds the supply. In the knowledge economy, companies are
competing in two markets, one for its products and services and one for the talent required to
develop and deliver them. With current low unemployment, the talent market is all the more
competitive.
