CIMMI: A Maturity Model for CI/CD Practices
A.S.J. Vos (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Sebastian Proksch – Mentor (TU Delft - Software Engineering)
J.E.A.P. Decouchant – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Data-Intensive Systems)
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Abstract
Modern software development has to conform to high standards. Developers rely on Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) to automate the software lifecycle. However, many developers are falling short in reaping all its benefits. Developers are often misguided due to a lack of awareness of all automations, and over-engineering specific aspects does not yield the expected outcomes.
Developers need guidance on their automation focus. A deeper understanding of the automation landscape is necessary to fully leverage the full potential of CI/CD, along with a structured framework that guides developers through these possibilities. We accomplish this by applying the concept of maturity to CI/CD practices.
In this work, we analyzed Python and Java repositories on GitHub. Through open coding and card sorting, an automation taxonomy was created to chart the automation landscape. We explore an approach that helps developers identify the most valuable automations for the current state of the project, aiming to ensure a balanced approach to different automation aspects and maximize the value of automation effort. We utilize this taxonomy in a survey and series of interviews to create a maturity model, which we validated through developer feedback on our repository analysis.
It was found that maturity has a strong positive association with key repository metrics, such as commit frequency. The majority of developers perceive the maturity model as effective and would use it to guide their CI/CD efforts.