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Towards a Better Understanding of CMMI and Agile Integration - Multiple Case Study of Four Companies

  • Conference paper
Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 32))

Abstract

The amount of software is increasing in the different domains in Europe. This provides the industries in smaller countries good opportunities to work in the international markets. Success in the global markets however demands the rapid production of high quality, error free software. Both CMMI and agile methods seem to provide a ready solution for quality and lead time improvements. There is not, however, much empirical evidence available either about 1) how the integration of these two aspects can be done in practice or 2) what it actually demands from assessors and software process improvement groups. The goal of this paper is to increase the understanding of CMMI and agile integration, in particular, focusing on the research question: how to use ‘lightweight’ style of CMMI assessments in agile contexts. This is done via four case studies in which assessments were conducted using the goals of CMMI integrated project management and collaboration and coordination with relevant stakeholder process areas and practices from XP and Scrum. The study shows that the use of agile practices may support the fulfilment of the goals of CMMI process areas but there are still many challenges for the agile teams to be solved within the continuous improvement programs. It also identifies practical advices to the assessors and improvement groups to take into consideration when conducting assessment in the context of agile software development.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, P.O. Box 1100, FIN-90571, Oulu, Finland

    Minna Pikkarainen

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  1. Minna Pikkarainen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer IIESE, Fraunhoferplatz 1, 67663, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Frank Bomarius

  2. Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, P.O.Box 3000, 90014, Finland

    Markku Oivo

  3. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Tietotie 3, 02150, Espoo, Finland

    Päivi Jaring

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, P.O.Box 68, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Pekka Abrahamsson

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Pikkarainen, M. (2009). Towards a Better Understanding of CMMI and Agile Integration - Multiple Case Study of Four Companies. In: Bomarius, F., Oivo, M., Jaring, P., Abrahamsson, P. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2009. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 32. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02152-7_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02152-7_30

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-02151-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-02152-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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