In the recent past, the Government of Pakistan has invested significantly in the development of software industry in Pakistan. Most of the initiatives have been made by the federal as well provincial governments to steer the local software industry towards becoming a regional hub for Information Technology (IT) services and software development and manufacturing. Keeping in view the current efforts made at government level and the local software industry, there is a need to establish and practice the internationally recognized standards in order to ensure the gain of competitive edge as well the global recognition of software development firms of the country. In this context, Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is well recognized, established and practiced framework that encompasses five levels of process maturity areas. To achieve a desired level of recognition and competitive edge amongst the software firms, the organization has to score high in CMMI maturity levels. However, the awareness and adoption of CMMI framework is extremely low in software development industry of Pakistan and only handful of firms has adopted and being practiced it. Furthermore, the CMMI framework is not a soundly documented area in Pakistan and this merits further research in the domain of CMMI ? in order to support and appreciate the adoption and adaptation of CMMI in Pakistan. The objective of this research work is the identification of the factors that have the potential to affect and delays a transition time between different levels of CMMI in software industry of Pakistan as well as to propose a Reference Model. The research objectives are aimed to achieve through adopting Hybrid-Method Methodology ? secondary research in the form of literature review to enable us to develop a questionnaire for carrying out the primary research while conducting face-to-face interview sessions with high profile software development professionals.