Maturity and its impact on new product development project performance

The Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM) has popularized the concept of process maturity. Software organizations use the CMM to assess their current capabilities and plan for further improvements. The purpose of this paper is to generalize the concept of maturity beyond the software engineering domain and determine the impact of maturity on project performance in new product development. In this paper we define the construct of maturity as the degree to which a process is defined, managed, measured, and continuously improved. We employ survey methodology to operationalize the construct, and a sample of 39 new product development programs is used to test the proposition that increased maturity leads to better project results, as measured by project cost and timeliness. We also test a number of environmental factors as moderators of this relationship. Results confirm a positive relationship between maturity and project success.