Appendix 3. Sustainable Software Development and the CMM

The misconception among many commercial software developers is that process discipline in software development (such as the CMM) is incompatible with fast-moving development processes such as XP. A similar misconception among many process-oriented peopleCMM or otherwiseis that developing software quickly is tantamount to chaos. If these two views persist, they will keep excellent development teams from realizing the benefits of structured process improvement, and likewise keep larger organizations from looking at alternative development methods. [Glazer 2001]

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) was developed by the Software Engineering Institute as a way to describe the maturity of a software organization's development practices. People who practice agile development view the CMM as being the opposite of agile: ponderous, cumbersome, and antiquated. Process-oriented people look upon agile methods as being undisciplined and chaotic. However, from the standpoint of sustainable development, there is actually a great deal to learn from and draw on from both agile development and the CMM. As pointed out in the quote above, people who dismiss agile are missing the benefits of simple and powerful development methods, and people who dismiss the CMM are limiting their ability to implement organizational process improvements. In this Appendix, I will briefly describe the CMM and then show how the CMM and agile development complement each other.