LIPE: A Lightweight Process for E-Business Startup Companies based on Extreme Programming

Lightweight development techniques (e.g., Extreme Programming) promise important benefits for software development with small teams in the face of unstable and vague requirements. Software development organizations are confronted with the problem that a bunch of techniques exist without knowing which ones are suited for their specific situation and how to integrate them into a omprehensive process. Especially for startup companies, guidance is crucial because they usually do not have time and money for creating their development process on a trial-and-error basis. This paper proposes a lightweight software process for a specific application domain (i.e., database- and user-interface-oriented off-the-shelf e-business applications). The process originates from analyzing experience from past e-business projects, interviews conducted with industry, and literature study. Expected benefits of this process are cost effectiveness, sufficiently high quality of the end product, and accelerated functionality-to-market. The process is described according to the dimensions activities, artifacts, roles and tools. In addition, this paper includes a description of a lightweight measurement program that is tailored to the characteristics of the described process. It can be used for controlling the project progress during project execution as well as for evaluating the effects of performing the process in a specific organization or company