Software Engineering Institute

+SAFE is an extension to CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV) that covers safety management and safety engineering. +SAFE supplements CMMI-DEV with two additional process areas that provide a basis for appraising or improving an organization's processes for providing safety-critical products. Developing such products requires specialized processes, skills, and experience. +SAFE is designed to identify safety strengths and weaknesses and to address identified weaknesses early in the acquisition process. 

+SAFE was designed to reduce the dependence of CMMI appraisers on safety domain expertise. This extension was developed for standalone use. It is not intended to be embedded in a CMMI model document, nor does it rely on any specific safety standards. However, there are intentional overlaps with CMMI model content and some safety standards. 

Since +SAFE is an extension of CMMI, it adopts the same assumptions, model structure, conventions, and terminology as CMMI and is affected by the general process-area and capability-level interactions inherent in CMMI. This technical report describes the +SAFE extension and how to use it to appraise an organization's capability in developing, sustaining, maintaining, and managing safety-critical products.