Chapter 42. Extreme Programming from a CMM Perspective

Mark C. Paulk

Copyright © 2003, Mark C. Paulk, This paper was presented at XP Universe, 2001, and a revision was published in IEEE Software, Nov/Dec 2001. All rights reserved.

Extreme Programming (XP) has been advocated recently as an appropriate programming method for the high-speed, volatile world of Internet and Web software development. This popular methodology is reviewed from the perspective of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for Software, a five-level model that prescribes process improvement priorities for software organizations. Overviews of both XP and CMM are provided, and XP is critiqued from a Software CMM perspective. The conclusion is that lightweight methodologies such as XP advocate many good engineering practices, although some practices may be controversial and counterproductive outside a narrow domain. For those interested in process improvement, the ideas in XP should be carefully considered for adoption where appropriate in an organization's business environment because XP can be used to address many of the CMM Level 2 and 3 practices. In turn, organizations using XP should carefully consider the management and infrastructure issues described in the CMM.