CMMI Compliant Modernization Framework to Transform Legacy Systems

Abstract

Legacy systems deteriorate due to changing business practices and recurrent problems such as high maintenance cost, lack of agility, and degraded performance. Modernization is highly desired especially for those organizations where key business processes are managed by legacy systems. During modernizing, two important aspects are usually ignored, i.e., the transformation of a legacy system to an enterprise solution, and considerations of quality concerns. This overlooking leads to a modernized information system that partially achieves the expected outcome. In this paper, we propose a Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Compliant Modernization Framework (CCMF) that addresses the problems of legacy systems by modernizing to an enterprise system in order to meet the expectations of stakeholders. CCMF is compatible with CMMI Level 2, which is a world-renowned software process improvement standard. Our proposed framework consists of eight distinct stages containing best practices with expected outcomes that are compliant with the specific goals of CMMI Level 2. The framework is based on various strategies that ensure the seamless modernization of legacy systems. Our contributions are twofold. First, it supports the modernization of outdated legacy systems to a more reliable enterprise solution. Second, it is compliant to CMMI standard with due consideration of quality and reliability concerns of the evolved modernized systems. The usability, scalability, and usefulness of the framework are validated by expert judgment on an industrial case study. Our proposed framework is also applicable for change-resistant companies with monolithic systems.