I read a similar NASA case-study a few years back when my employer jumped on the CMM band-wagon.

The folks that where pushing CMM emphasized the benefits including higher quality, lower costs, less reliance on key people, and so forth.

I read the CMM book published by Carnegie Mellon. The book didn't really speak much to the commoditization of "key people" but instead referenced a NASA case study

The NASA case study included many of the best practices used to produce the quality of software required by NASA. The case study discussed the costs required to achieve this level (CMM level 5) of quality. I don't have the book on hand, but there was a passage stating that NASA had spent a large amount of money assuring a level of quality in the code but was statistically certain that defects still existed in the code. However, finding and removing these defects would be cost prohibitive (a 100% increase in costs!).

I considered the NASA case study to be a fair, consistent piece of literature and far more realistic than most of the dogmatic slogans that I associate with CMM.

In conclusion, folks pushing 'process' up the management chain should provide all the information to the execs, not just the rhetoric.