Toward maturity model for extreme programming

TLDR

Extreme Programming (XP) is a lightweight, rapidly growing software development methodology whose appeal stems from its unique set of practices, yet some view it as a justification for avoiding established programming standards. The authors argue that a maturity model for XP is required to assess project risk and determine whether a project adheres to XP or CMMI practices. They introduce a straightforward four‑level maturity model to evaluate XP adoption.

Abstract

Extreme programming (XP) is a lightweight software development methodology. It attracts attention of many software development teams and its popularity is growing very fast. A part of success comes from interesting composition of programming practices included in XP. But what particularly appeals to programmers and makes XP especially interesting to them is resignation of inspection meetings, thick documentation etc. Many people do not understand XP and they find XP a good excuse for not using approved programming practices. Thus, a maturity model for XP is needed that would indicate the risk associated with a project and in some cases make it clear that a project is following neither CMMI(SM) nor XP practices. In the paper, we propose a simple 4-level maturity model for XP.