Is ISO/IEC 15504 Applicable to Agile Methods?

n the last two decades several models for evaluating software process capability have been defined and became more and more popular. The application of such models, and in particular the ISO/IEC 15504, determined a general software process improvement in many domains. Nevertheless, the application of the ISO/IEC 15504 standard is still considered by many agile developers as incompatible with agile approaches. Such an attitude is mainly based on common misunderstandings on what the ISO/IEC 15504 is and on what its application involves. This paper aims at showing that this standard, if genuinely applied, can be effectively used also in agile contexts.