I'm interested in learning more about good software design practices and quality assurance.
It's about the process.
They Write the Right Stuff details the way NASA's on-board shuttle group writes code.
Block quoth the article:
This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.
This article would lead one to believe
SEI CMM Level 5 is what you are looking for. Interesting statistics about the CMM certification process can be found
here.
Cheers,
Brent
-- Yeah, I'm a Delt.