As described above, the purpose of maturity models is to give guidance through an evolutionary process by incorporating formality into the promising improvement activities. According to Fraser et al., all maturity models share the common property of defining a number of dimensions at several stages of maturity, with a description of characteristic performance at various levels of granularity (Fraser et al., 2002). Basic elements of maturity models are a number of levels (typically three to six), a descriptor for each level (such as the CMM’s differentiation between initial, repeatable, defined, managed, and optimizing processes), a generic description or summary of the characteristics of each level as a whole, a number of dimensions (such as the ‘process areas’ in CMM), a number of elements or activities for each dimension, and a description of each element or activity as it might be performed at each level of maturity.