1 Agile Methods – Cmmi - Sw : Linking the Two Extremes

The article explores the possible link between agile methods and CMMI-SW. Major issues incited from such link are: documentation, communication, user involvement, and application types. Interrelationships among these issues are highlighted as well, such as the relationship among the first there issues. Then three strategies for such link are proposed: separatism, integration (hybrid/concurrent, front-end, and back-end), and re-engineering of both methods. Even though current research on the integration of the two focuses on the hybrid approach, this article advocates the concurrent approach, and provides a framework for continuous CMMI-SW improvement towards agility. It is hoped that the research of this paper will encourage the Gulf nations to seek certification and establish local training and certification centers to face globalization challenge in the area of software development. INTRODUCTION TO AGILE METHEDS AND CMMI-SW Agile methods (AM) simply threw out old software development life cycle (SDLC) concepts associated with the waterfall model, such as milestones, deliverables, blue prints, road maps, as well as CASE terminologies, such as front-end, back-end, and re-engineering. It then capitalized on newer concepts, which were evolving during the last decade, such as client-led design, client-centered design, participatory design, joint application design, rapid application development, and the different SDLC models, such as prototyping, incremental, and evolutionary. AM eliminated lines of demarcation between traditional SDLC phases through the use of releases and iterations, see (Beck, 1999) for example. AM efforts were culminated by the agile manifesto as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. The Agile Manifesto Capability Maturity Model Integration Software (CMMI-SW) evolved from the multiple models of CMM as a single reference model to make it easier for organization to follow model requirements. Most of previous research was done on the link between AM and CMM