Continuous Representation :

1. Process areas are organized by process area categories.
2. Improvement is measured using capability levels. Capability levels measure the maturity of a particular process across an organization; it ranges from 0 through 5.
3. There are two TYPES of specific practices: base and advanced. All specific practices appear in the continuous representation.
4. Capability levels are used to organize the generic practices.
5. All generic practices are INCLUDED in each process area.
6. EQUIVALENT staging allows determination of a maturity level from an organization's ACHIEVEMENT profile.

Staged Representation :

1. Process areas are organized by maturity levels.
2. Improvement is measured using maturity levels. Maturity levels measure the maturity of a set of processes across an organization: it ranges from 1 through 5.
3. There is only one type of specific practice. The concepts of base and advanced practices are not used. All specific practices appear in the staged representation except when a related base-advanced pair of practices appears in the continuous representation, in which case only the advanced practice appears in the staged representation.
4. Common features are used to organize generic practices.
5. Only the level 2 and level 3 generic practices are included.
6. There is no NEED for an equivalence mechanism to back the continuous representation because each organization can choose what to improve and how much to improve using the staged representation.

Continuous Representation :

Staged Representation :