Conceptual alignment between SPEM-based processes and CMMI

Abstract

In the course of process improvement, software organizations attempt to concurrently implement practices that originate from different models, extracting the best from each. Issues of integration and compliance are raised due to missing conceptual view. This paper presents a new method for an explicit alignment between SPEM-based software process modeling and CMMI corpus of best practices. The alignment of process activities with CMMI goes beyond the maturity assessment; it sustains the conceptualization of introducing new software engineering practices at the process-level and open a new topic of combining conceptually parts of different process models. Our method extends the SPEM Meta-model by introducing new interface to CMMI Meta-data. This extension allows visualization of the practices' intentions within the activity breakdown structure. In addition, it offers a conceptual assessment of process maturity level according to CMMI scales. The method has been fully implemented in a process modeling tool and applied in both academic and industrial contexts to justify improvement opportunities through meaningful dashboards.