AbstractCM$^3$: Problem Management is a first detailed descriptive problem management process model to be utilized within corrective maintenance. It is the result of a long‐term empirical study of industrial corrective maintenance processes. It has been developed at ABB and evaluated for its industrial relevance within 17 non‐ABB organizations.Playing the role of a descriptive model, CM$^3$: Problem Management specifies what a problem management process should look like. It also structures it into three maturity levels, Initial, Defined, and Optimal, where each level offers a different grainedness of process visibility.In this paper, we present the CM$^3$ levels of problem management process maturity within corrective maintenance and match them against the industrial state of practice. Our goal is to establish the current status of problem management maturity using CM$^3$: Problem Management as an evaluation model. Our evaluation results show that the industrial processes today suffice to attend to software problems within corrective maintenance. Very few of them, however, do learn from the past in order to prevent future problems and to improve development or maintenance processes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.