Initially adopted by defense organizations and their contractors, it is now used in organizations both large and small throughout the software industry. The initiating, diagnosing, establishing, acting, and leveraging phases define a cycle for continuous improvement. An organization begins an improvement effort in the initiating phase where it sets context, develops sponsorship, and establishes a supporting Attachment 1 infrastructure for process improvement. The diagnosing phase includes appraising and characterizing the current process and is where process assessments generally take place. In the establishing phase, organizations use the diagnosis to develop a strategy and set priorities, create teams to look at particular improvement areas, and plan individual improvement tasks.
Organizations execute the planned improvements during the acting phase.
In the leveraging phase, organizations document and analyze lessons from this iteration of the model and plan changes for the next cycle.