A set of activities, methods, practices and transformations that people use to develop and maintain software and the associated products (e.g. project plans, design documents, code, test cases and user manuals). [SW-CMM]

The process or set of processes used by an organisation or project to plan, manage, execute, monitor, control and improve its software related activities. [ISO 15504]

An appraisal by a trained team of software professionals to determine the state of an organisation's current software process, to determine the high-priority software process-related issues facing an organisation and to obtain the organisational support for software process improvement. [SW-CMM]

The operational definition of a major software process component identified in the project's defined software process or the organisation's standard software process. It documents, in a complete, precise and verifiable manner, the requirements, design, behavior or other characteristics of a software process. [SW-CMM]

A constituent element of a software process description. Each process element covers a well-defined, bounded, closely related set of tasks (e.g. software estimating element, software design element, coding element and peer review element). The descriptions of the process elements may be templates to be filled in, fragments to be completed, abstractions to be refined or complete descriptions to be modified or used unmodified. [SW-CMM]

A plan, derived from the recommendations of a software process assessment, that identifies the specific actions that will be taken to improve the software process and outlines the plans for implementing those actions. Sometimes referred to as an action plan. [SW-CMM]

A documented suggestion for change to a process or process-related item that will improve software process capability and performance. [SW-CMM]

The extent to which a specific process is explicitly defined, managed, measured, controlled and effective. Maturity implies a potential for growth in capability and indicates both the richness of an organisation's software process and the consistency with which it is applied in projects throughout the organisation. [SW-CMM]

Example documents and document fragments, which are expected to be of use to future projects when they are tailoring the organisation's standard software process. The examples may cover subjects such as a project's defined software process, standards, procedures, software development plans, measurement plans and process training materials. [SW-CMM]