Required, Expected, and Informative Components

Model components are grouped into three categories—required, expected, and informative—that reflect how to interpret them.

Required Components
Required components describe what an organization must achieve to satisfy a process area. This achievement must be visibly implemented in an organization’s processes. The required components in CMMI are the specific and generic goals. Goal satisfaction is used in appraisals as the basis for deciding whether a process area has been achieved and satisfied.

Expected Components
Expected components describe what an organization may implement to achieve a required component. Expected components guide those who implement improvements or perform appraisals. Expected components include the specific and generic practices.
Before goals can be considered satisfied, either the practices as described, or acceptable alternatives to them, are present in the planned and implemented processes of the organization.

Informative Components
Informative components provide details that help organizations get started in thinking about how to approach the required and expected components. Subpractices, typical work products, amplifications, generic practice elaborations, goal and practice titles, goal and practice notes, and references are examples of informative model components.The CMMI glossary of terms is not a required, expected, or informative component of CMMI models. You should interpret the terms in the glossary in the context of the model component in which they appear.