Guidelines for applying XP in a CMM Level 5 organization

Abstract

The Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM or SW-CMM) is a framework that describes all the key elements that a process must have in order to be effective, it is organized based on five levels of maturity and covers planning, engineering and management practices for software development and maintenance. It is an incremental path for improvement based on the maturity levels of the model. This model has become an industry standard for Software Development. However, some practitioners look at CMM as a very complex model to be applied to small projects, so applying lightweight methodologies is seen as a way of overcoming this problem. Extreme Programming (XP) constitutes one of the most widely used lightweight methodologies, enabling the development of small projects in record time, fostering total customer satisfaction and being a strong alternative when short cycle time and high quality are sought in a Software project. Nevertheless, at first sight it seems controversial to apply XP in a CMM Level 5 organization, mainly because using XP for software development in a process improvement environment barely touches the management and organizational issues that the Software CMM emphasizes. On the other hand, XP supporters claim that there is a potential possibility of XP losing its characteristics when working on a rigid structure such as CMM. The aim of the paper is to show the possible integration of XP method under the CMM framework. This paper briefly introduces the CMM model and the XP methodology, and gives some guidelines for CMM Level 5 organizations to apply XP to small projects, specifying how CMM KPAs’ goals can be fulfilled even when a lightweight methodology such as XP is being used.