CEFAM: Comprehensive Evaluation Framework for Agile Methodologies

Agile software development is regarded as an effective and efficient approach, mainly due to its ability to accommodate rapidly changing requirements, and to cope with modern software development challenges. There is therefore a strong tendency to use agile software development methodologies where applicable; however, the sheer number of existing agile methodologies and their variants hinders the selection of an appropriate agile methodology or method chunk. Methodology evaluation tools address this problem through providing detailed evaluations, yet no comprehensive evaluation framework is available for agile methodologies. We introduce the comprehensive evaluation framework for agile methodologies (CEFAM) as an evaluation tool for project managers and method engineers. The hierarchical (and mostly quantitative) evaluation criterion set introduced in this evaluation framework enhances the usability of the framework and provides results that are precise enough to be useful for the selection, adaptation and construction of agile methodologies.