Chaos Engineering

Chapter 15. Chaos Maturity Model

When the team at Netflix wrote the first book on Chaos Engineering,¹ they introduced the “Chaos Maturity Model.” This was initially a joke, playing on the CMM from the late ’80s/early ’90s—the “Capability Maturity Model” developed at Carnegie Mellon University to analyze the software development process. That framework was a very heavy-handed process, which stood in stark contrast to the culture at Netflix where “process” was a bad word.

As the team at Netflix played with the model, it actually made sense. Turns out that the joke was not a joke. The Chaos Maturity Model actually provides value, particularly to organizations looking for ways to assess and increase their investment in Chaos Engineering practices.

In very broad terms, the software industry as a whole is not homogenous enough to support industry standards around Chaos Engineering. Infrastructures, cultures, expectations, and maturity are too different for a drop-in solution that would provide some base level of functionality comparable across different companies. In lieu of industry standards, the Chaos Maturity Model presents sliding scales on which different Chaos Engineering practices can be evaluated for comparison and refinement.

This chapter illustrates the Chaos Maturity Model (CMM) as a framework. This can be used to plot a map of a team or organization’s position. The map visually suggests where the team can go to improve if the path of others in Chaos Engineering is any indication ...