The Testing Maturity Model (TMM)

TMM (Testing Maturity Model) was developed, in 1996, at the Illinois Institute of Technology [2,3]. It reflects the evolutionary pattern of testing process maturity growth documented over the last several
decades. The basis for it was the historical model provided by Gelperin and Hetzel [5]. Their model describes phases and test goals for the periods of the 1950’s through the late 1980’s. Basically four periods can be distinguished: The “debugging oriented” period, where testing was merely seen as an activity to help remove bugs, the “destruction oriented” period focused on testing as an activity to detect implementation faults, the “evaluation oriented” period in which testing became an activity that was integrated into the software life cycle with the purpose to detect requirements, design and implementation faults. Finally, the “preventionoriented” stage where the scope of testing is broadly defined and includes review activities, with the primary goal to prevent requirement, design and implementation faults. The basic idea behind TMM is that every organisation goes through these historical phases, and that by providing the characteristics of these phases the test maturity can be determined. Thus in essence, TMM is an assessment. model rather than an improvement model. But an assessment model can be used as a basis for an improvement programme as well.

TMM has two major components: the Maturity Model, in which five maturity levels are distinguished (like in CMM), and an Assessment Model. Each maturity level, with the exception of the initial level 1, has a structure consisting of: A set of maturity goals, identifying testing improvement goals that must be addressed to achieve maturity at that level (consider these as the Key Process Areas) Supporting subgoals, defining the scope, boundaries and needed accomplishments for a particular level necessary to achieve the goals associated with each level.
The model with its maturity levels and goals is depicted in Figure 1.

Click on the above figure, to view in large.