A model-driven approach to adopt good practices for agile process configuration and certification

Context: The agile development paradigm has been extensively adopted in the industry. This adoption is highly dependent on the knowledge and good practices applied by most experienced practitioners in organizations. Hence, it would be valuable to count on appropriate support to preserve and systematically use this expert knowledge in configuring agile development processes aligned with organizational standards. Objective: This paper presents a model-driven approach for representing and selecting good practices to configure agile practices in development processes aligned with organizational development practices and quality standards. Method: We define a conceptual approach for configuring agile development processes that fulfills enterprise good practices and external quality standards. This approach was implemented in a tool suite and applied to an industrial development scenario related to ISO 9001 certification. Results: The approach was implemented in a model-driven tool that provides automatic support for identifying good practices when configuring agile development processes. The tool also verifies consistency with development methods and quality standards, such as ISO 9001. Conclusions: The results obtained from the industrial application indicate that practitioners can reuse expert knowledge to configure agile development processes aligned with quality certifications. Moreover, the approach also facilitates the tailoring of agile practices into concrete development processes that take advantage of organizational good practices.