Happy New Year to everyone!

Dear Readers,

Thank you for being one of the 300+ readers per day of "Ask the CMMI Appraiser!  In 2013 we will continue to bring you CMMI and Agile tips, suggestions, and entertainment FREE with no advertising!

We want to take this time to wish each and every one of you a happy and prosperous 2013!

Happy New Year, CMMI Style!

Hey, CMMI Appraiser, as a newly promoted executive of a large New York IT engineering firm, my goal in 2013 is to get CMMI certified. What are some of the behaviors you would recommend that our leadership team adopt to make this goal a reality? ~ Chuck A.

Chuck, congratulations on your promotion! Before I address the behaviors you need to adopt, please allow this CMMI Appraiser to lift a glass in your honor, wishing you and yours a very happy New Year and a prosperous CMMI program in 2013.

Now, Chuck, you are on the right track when you ask what behaviors you need to adopt. To paraphrase a wise man, fortunate are those who understand that the CMMI is about behavioral modeling for solving business problems, for they shall have a successful CMMI adoption. That’s why this CMMI appraiser always encourages executives to think of the CMMI as a tool to help improve the techniques and practices, as opposed to an end in itself.

But what to make of this “my goal is to get CMMI certified” statement? IMHO, focusing certification isn't quite the right goal. Do you really want my honest recommendation? Just resolve to be a great company. The certification will follow....I promise!

To help you reach this more useful New Year’s Resolution, I will share some of the behaviors you asked for. These behaviors are provided to us by the most important part of the CMMI, the Generic Practices (or GPs). There are 12 of them, and they are the responsibility of executives like you who are leading the CMMI effort, so study them well!

1) I Resolve to Establish an Organizational Policy (Generic Practice 2.1) – It may not seem obvious, but GP 2.1 is very pivotal to the success of your program (and your engineers). It guides you to provide a clear and unambiguous setting of expectations by management that the employees will use the process as it has been written and defined.

2) I Resolve to Plan the Process (Generic Practice 2.2) – The second GP guides us to establish and maintain the plan for performing the process. This is another very pivotal GP in the model. With GP2.2, we develop an infrastructure where all processes we expect people to use are planned for. The idea is that we can expect people to do things all we want, but unless it's also planned for, it ain't gonna happen.

3) I Resolve to Provide Resources (Generic Practice 2.3) – The third GP guides us to provide adequate resources for performing the process, developing the work products, and providing the services of the process. In other words, give your team the tools and environmental resources for the processes to be useful, so your team can be successful.

4) I Resolve to Assign Responsibility (Generic Practice 2.4) – The fourth GP guides us to assign responsibility and authority for performing the process, developing the work products, and providing the services of the process.

5) I Resolve to Train People (Generic Practice 2.5) – The fifth GP guides us to train the people performing or supporting the process. In other words, if you expect your Project Managers to be efficient at estimating and planning, you need to train them on estimating and planning.  You may also enroll them in CMMI training.

6) I Resolve to Control Work Products (Generic Practice 2.6) – GP2.6 guides us to place designated work products of the process under appropriate levels of configuration management. GP2.6 basically provides a double layer of protection for you. First, it offers you guidance to manage all of your reams of documents, databases, and other work products that are produced as a result of running a successful project. Second, it provides guidance on how to store those documents and work products, and manage them in some kind of repository or system.

7) I Resolve to Identify and Involve Relevant Stakeholders (Generic Practice 2.7) – The seventh GP guides us to identify and involve relevant stakeholders of the process as planned. GP2.7 is another pivotal practice. It advocates the idea that if you identify and INVOLVE all the relevant stakeholders, and PLAN for their involvement, you'll increase the chances that they will show up and do what you want them to do.

8) I Resolve to Monitor and Control the Process (Generic Practice 2.8) – The eighth generic practice guides us to monitor and control the process against the plan for performing the process and take appropriate corrective action. GP2.8 is all about answering one simple question: "How do you know?" How do you know if the process works? How would you make it better? Are things improving? Getting worse? Static? This is a very pivotal practice - maybe the most pivotal. This gives us data about how well the process works. If we don't know that - why are we doing this?

9) I Resolve to Objectively Evaluate Adherence (Generic Practice 2.9) – The ninth generic practice (GP2.9) guides us to objectively evaluate adherence of the process against its process description, standards, and procedures, and address noncompliance. In other words, GP2.9 is the act of capturing the data about adherence and reporting it out. This implies some level of oversight. Are engineers using the process or not. If they are not, why not? What’s the problem? How can we fix it? What did we do wrong? How could they get more value out of it?

10) I Resolve to Review Status with Higher Level Management (Generic Practice 2.10) – The tenth GP guides us to review status with higher-level management. But that doesn't mean what you think it means. It means management needs to care. In other words, do you care about the right things? Are you looking at the right indicators? Do you even know what the right metrics are? I’ll give you a hint. The right metrics should help you understand things like: How happy are our customers? Do we have a lot of rework here? How productive are our employees? What kind of defects do we have?

11) I Resolve to Establish a Defined Process (Generic Practice 3.1) – GP3.1 guides us to establish a defined process. This takes some explaining. There’s more to GP3.1 than establishing a defined process. GP3.1 is really guiding us to define how each process is going to be performed within the context of the project.

12) I Resolve to Collect Process Related Experiences (Generic Practice 3.2) – GP3.2 guides us to collect process related experiences – or ways of “doing it better” next time. This is the last Generic Practice, and another pivotal practice. GP3.2 is about making the process better, based on data and experience. In other words, ask yourself what is the “experience” of the project? This is the lesson we learned from implementing the process.

So that's what it takes, Chuck.  Resolve first to be a great company. Focus on the behaviors that make you a great company, and use the CMMI as one of the tools that can help get you there. Not only will you achieve CMMI Level 2 or CMMI Level 3 as a natural result … not only will you drive the software process improvement results you are looking for … but you’ll be on the path to greatness in 2013. And that’s a goal worth attaining.

Happy New Year!


Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about engineering strategy, performance innovation , software process improvement and running a successful CMMI program.

If we buy a CMMI Level 5 company, are we Level 5?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser, if we acquire a company that’s ML5, that makes us ML5, right? ~ 5PI Meetup Attendee

Today’s episode of CMMI-TV was filmed at a recent "5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success" (5PI) Meet-up in Virginia, where this CMMI Appraiser presented on “Agile Resiliency.” An attendee asked if acquiring an ML5 company would make them an ML5 company. Below is a video clip with my answer, followed by a synopsis of my response. Enjoy!

OVERVIEW

When one company that is not ML5 acquires a company that is ML5, it creates a culture mashup that does not automatically elevate the new organization to ML5. If you think about Maturity Levels of companies like the maturity levels of children of different ages, you see why it won’t work.

ANALOGY

A single dad with a 3 year-old son marries a single woman with a 12 year-old son. The dad says, “This is really cool, now my 3 year-old is transformed to a 12 year-old! And he will be able to clean his room as well as the 12-year old.”

It’s not going to happen. The older child can teach the younger child do to things a lot faster and better than he would have been able to do them on his own, and he may even have some processes that the younger one can use. But the two are are different levels of proficiency, with skills and abilities that are mashed and mismatched.

CORRELATION TO THE BUSINESS WORLD

This CMMI Appraiser is currently working with the US subsidiary of a German company. The CEO recently told me, “Our parent company in Germany is just going to send us a binder. It has all the processes in it. We’re just going to start using it. Can we schedule our appraisal?”

"uhhh... I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

It just doesn’t work. You are different. You are a different kind of business, with different cultures, and those processes don’t necessarily translate.

It is not a good assumption to think that you would be ML5 if you acquired a company that was ML5.  And that's putting it gently.

ABOUT CMMI-TV: CMMI-TV is a place where we can add value to the engineering and software development community by offering advice on engineering strategy, performance innovation and software process improvement. If you find this useful, please forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI program.

Subscribe to my CMMI-TV YouTube channel!

Dear Readers,

Here's a special gift for you on this holiday season - CMMI-TV!

Subscribe to my CMMI-TV channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/asktheCMMIAppraiser

Enjoy the show, and have a happy holiday season!

ABOUT CMMI-TV: CMMI-TV is a place where we can add value to the engineering and software development community by offering advice on engineering strategy, performance innovation and software process improvement. If you find this useful, please forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI program.

How do we convince management to buy into CMMI?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser, how do you get management to buy into adopting the CMMI? ~ 5PI Attendee

Today’s episode of CMMI-TV was filmed at a recent "5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success" (5PI) Meet-up in Virginia, where this CMMI Appraiser presented on “Agile Resiliency.” An attendee asked how to get management to buy into adopting the CMMI. Below is a video clip with my answer, followed by a synopsis of my response. Enjoy!

OVERVIEW

Adopting the CMMI is about behavioral modeling for solving business problems and having a company “Way”. To encourage management to consider adopting the Model, think of the CMMI as a tool to help improve the techniques and practices, as opposed to an end in itself.

ADOPTING THE CMMI TO SOLVE BUSINESS PROBLEMS

To start, don’t worry about CMMI specifically. Instead, ask what kind of business problems management is having, such as:

• Do you have late projects?
• Do you have over-budget projects?
• Do you have unhappy customers?
• Do you have unhappy employees?
• Do you have too many meetings?
• Do you lose your best people to competitors?
• Do you have difficulty with sustainability or scalabilty?
• Are you losing market-share?

New behaviors can be learned. That’s why this CMMI Appraiser is passionate about helping engineering and software executives and professionals learn to use the CMMI as one of the tools that can help them transform the culture of their companies. It’s a modeling tool that a lot of companies have successfully used to solve their most pressing business problems.

ADOPTING THE CMMI TO ESTABLISH THE COMPANY’S “WAY”

Help management understand that the CMMI is about behavioral modeling, not engineering modeling. It’s really about how management wants people to behave and the “Way” the company does business. Having a Way that the work gets done allows management to establish the type of environment in which great goals are attainable and great outcomes are repeatable. Having a well defined Way helps improve all areas of the business, including:

• Being profitable
• Winning new business
• Keeping customers
• Improving quality
• Avoiding risk

It’s a powerful concept when you grasp that nothing is more important than the way your work gets done. Adopting the CMMI is one way to create predictable, repeatable and consistent outcomes ­– your Way.

ABOUT CMMI-TV: CMMI-TV is a place where we can add value to the engineering and software development community by offering advice on engineering strategy, performance innovation and software process improvement. If you find this useful, please forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI program.

Wishing You a Happy CMMI!

Dear Readers,

In this time of joy and reflection, this CMMI Appraiser is grateful for those who see our blog as a source of ideas for practical, agile, incremental ways to make their companies better, using the CMMI as one of the tools that can help. We welcomed our 100,000th visitor to the blog this year, and feel privileged to be traveling the “path to greatness” with you.

To show our appreciation, we have a few things for you.

First, a gift. Please accept a FREE copy of our holiday classic, “CMMI for Executives: The 12 Days of CMMI”. This eBook takes you, as the leader of your organization, on a twelve-day celebration designed to show you the good times of CMMI, so you can help your organization be a great organization by adopting one Generic Practice (GP) per day.

Click here and enter our "Premium Content" section to download your FREE copy of “CMMI for Executives: The 12 Days of CMMI”.

Second, a gift idea. To help with your last-minute holiday shopping, we invite you to download a copy of our new book, “How to Spell CMMI” (shown above), on sale just for you on Amazon for just 99 cents. This introduction to the CMMI helps executives, engineers, and business professionals learn how to think about applying the CMMI to solve their most pressing business challenges. It just may be the perfect present for anyone who has been tasked with learning about the CMMI.

Click here to purchase your 99-cent copy of “How to Spell CMMI, An Introduction to the Organizational Performance Improvement Model Everyone’s Buzzing About!”

The holidays are a wonderful time of year for parties and exchanging gifts. But every day is a holiday when you see the CMMI as we see it - as an ongoing celebration, a model for being joyful in the quest for becoming a great company.

So click and download the FREE eBook for yourself, and click to purchase the Amazon book for that special engineering or software professional on your list.

Have a happy CMMI!

Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about engineering strategy, performance innovation , software process improvement and running a successful CMMI program.

On Building Airplanes and Observing Process Infrastructure

Hey, CMMI Appraiser, when building your own airplane, do you use process improvement methods for that? ~ Bill Fox, 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success

Today’s episode of CMMI-TV was filmed at a recent "5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success" (5PI) Meet-up in Virginia, where this CMMI Appraiser presented on “Agile Resiliency.” Host Bill Fox wondered if I used process improvement methods for my airplane building project. Below is a video clip with my answer, followed by a synopsis of my response. Enjoy!

 

OVERVIEW

There is a strong correlation between the powers of observation demonstrated by a good FAA Inspector, and those of a good CMMI Appraiser, regarding the collection of process performance information.

THE DAY OF MY FAA INSPECTION

The airplane inspector walks into the shop where I am building my airplane, looks around, sees that the shop is in order, and says, “You’re good.”

My father is unhappy about this, and says, “You know, Jeff is going to fly in this airplane. How can you tell that everything’s done right?”

The instructor says, “See those bins there? There are about 50 rivet bins, and everything is neatly labeled with a number. Nothing is scratched out. They are all in order of rivet size. See this floor? You could eat off this floor. See those parts? They are hung on the wall and there are drawings around where they hang, to make sure they are in the right place. There is nothing wrong with this airplane!”

Of course, he digs a little deeper....but comes to the same conclusion.

ALIGNMENT WITH CMMI AND AGILE

This is similar to what a good Lead Appraiser does when conducting both the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) SCAMPI appraisals and agile assessments. He or she looks around at the evidence, including:

• Scrum team room with “information radiators” that can "radiate" information about 50+ practices from the CMMI
• White board covered with sticky notes, with risks identified, carefully prioritized ('what keeps you up at night') with their sources associated with them
• Photographs and drawings
• Tours
• Presentations about projects before the start of the appraisal
• Comments in the code
• Sketches on napkins (as long as they are clean, can be scanned, stored, retrieved, shared, and used to make other projects better)

SUMMARY

Building good software is all about issues that are outside of the methodology you use.

Building good software is all about infrastructure, and setting up the infrastructure so that you can perform the work reliably and effectively – and be productive without a lot of chaos and headaches.

In creating a resilient environment for building good software (or airplanes), you can take a model like the CMMI and a methodology like Agile, and mash them together, and get some really cool infrastructure out of it.

ABOUT CMMI-TV: CMMI-TV is a place where we can add value to the engineering and software development community by offering advice on engineering strategy, performance innovation and software process improvement. If you find this useful, please forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI program.

What does the CMMI look like for an agile shop?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser, we're Agile and we want to be CMMI Level 3 by 2014. From what I understand, the CMMI is a set of 346 practices that we must adhere to. Is there a simpler way to think and talk about this journey we are about to embark on? ~ Michael H.

Hey, Michael, how right you are to be thinking of your adoption of the CMMI as a journey. That’s exactly what the CMMI is meant to be: an ongoing adventure to learn about the way your company works, and to learn new techniques that can put you on the path to being a great company, using CMMI as one of your tools.

So, instead of referring to the CMMI as a set of 346 practices that you must adhere to in order to achieve CMMI Level 3, I suggest a different construct. Think of the CMMI as a set of questions that you need to ask yourself about in order to be successful, and prioritize their level of importance. Those questions can be organized into a mental model that looks like this:

I call this model the Agile Resilience Architecture - "ARA" (we wouldn't technology geeks if we didn't have a TLA for it, would we now?)  The architecture helps you put into context not only what Agile really is, but also how you might go about improving it using a tool like CMMI.

Why does this model work?

You may not have ever heard a Lead Appraiser say this, Michael, but not all practices in the Capability Maturity Model Integration are as important as other practices in your particular context. Some practices are more important to you than others. And every company has its own set of priorities, which is one of the reasons that CMMI appraisals can be quite difficult. Context means everything.

The Agile Resilience Architecture is contextual in nature.  It keeps you focused on what's most important to your business and your process, and ultimately, your product.  It includes the following categories:

FIRST TIER OF AGILE RESILIENCE: Guiding the Work

Start with Agile values and think of them as guiding your work. When you tie everything back to your Agile values, you are able to ask questions such as: Does the process we’re going to adopt include things like failing fast, iterative and incremental ways of running the project, and collaboration between teams? Does it include using information radiators and all of these things that we know are true about all Agile methods?

This level of Agile Resilience is your foundation.  It reminds you to let Agile values guide your work. For instance, if someone is saying to you, “We need to implement this process,” the first thing you should do is say, "Does it comply with our Agile values?"

SECOND TIER OF AGILE RESILIENCE: Managing the Work

On the second level of the architecture is the method or framework for managing the work of Scrum. The CMMI is an excellent task-management system that takes into consideration a way to sequence things, a way to prioritize things. Over time, it helps you transform your company culture, and manage the change.

THIRD TIER OF AGILE RESILIENCE: Doing the Work

The third level, techniques, describes doing the work. This includes Planning Poker, Continuous Builds, Story Time, Backlog Grooming, Retrospectives, etc.

And so we have our three layers: our values, our methods and our techniques. As we’re building this resiliency model, it is important to clearly separate these things out and get a clear mental picture of each. We really can’t improve ourselves to make our Agile methodology resilient if we don’t have this information.

Instead of trying to replicate the CMMI in a Waterfall-type of methodology, and rather than looking for 346 practices to check-off, take a look at your Agile methodology through the perspective of the Resilient Agile Three-Tiered Architecture.  Not only will you be able to focus clearly on your values, methods, techniques -- but you’ll be on your way to a highly rewarding journey of continuous improvement.

Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI program.

Be Agile, but it's more than just techiques

Dear Readers,

This CMMI Appraiser is often asked, “Can CMMI and Agile work together?”

As you know if you are a regular reader of this blog, my answer is always, yes, they work extremely well together. But recently I’ve found that the question often exposes a lack of understanding of what makes a company Agile.

For example, I just got off the phone with a Quality Assurance Director from a large New York manufacturing firm, who had been tasked with finding a CMMI Appraiser who understands Agile methods. Our conversation went something like this:

“Hey, CMMI Appraiser, we’re doing daily Scrums, you know,  daily stand-ups, so we’re Agile.”

I said, Okay. So you’re doing daily stand-ups. That’s great. That’s a fantastic way to fail-fast and to understand what’s going on. That technique will help you get a lot of great information. But, tell me a little bit about how you are organizing your project.

“Well,” the QA Director said, “we have six-month long sprints, and we have a massive status meeting every Monday. Everybody pulls out their printed status report and they start to list all of their issues, risks, and tasks for the next few month.”

Why are you doing that? I asked.

And he said, “Because we need to be CMMI Level 3.”

I explained that the adoption of Agile techniques doesn't make you Agile. What makes embracing Agile values along the methods and techniques you’re using.

He kept pushing back. “No, no, we’re an Agile shop,” he said. “We don’t use processes, and that’s why our customers are telling us we need to be CMMI Level 3.”

Wait a minute, I said. You don’t use processes? But you use planning poker?  You’re adopting some XP techniques, and you’re measuring value and velocity and  refactoring right?

“Well, yes …”

Those are processes, aren't they?

“No, they are techniques.”

I pointed out that we had arrived at the crux of his misunderstanding. It turns out instantiating a techniques IS a type of a process, albeit perhaps incomplete.

Now, the word “process” has a lot of baggage, and I get that. It makes a lot of people unhappy. We've all been over-processed by the process police.

But it’s critical to understand that Agile teams use processes just as much as any Waterfall organization. And guess what? Those Agile processes ALL can be improved by (and are contained within) the CMMI.

The reason Agile and CMMI work so well together is that CMMI is a framework for improving whatever it is you do. As I explained to my new friend, we use Agile methods to design and deploy the processes and behaviors that a great company needs. That's right - we use Agile to build Agile processes!

The words change. The infrastructures change. But the one constant with adopting the AgileCMMI approach, regardless of constellation, model or method, is the ability to take what you are already doing, and make it better.

Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Don't miss our CMMI Training class coming up in Virginia February 11-14, 2013
Introduction to CMMI-DEV v1.3. Register at www.broadswordsolutions.com

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI program.

Why do we need agile resilience?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser, why do we need agile resilience? ~ Agile DC Conference participant 

Most readers are aware that this CMMI Appraiser spends a lot of time and energy speaking all over the country (and planet) about issues that are most important to engineering and software professionals today. One of the hottest issues right now is how to make agile stronger against opposing forces -- or, to coin a phrase, how to create “agile resilience.”

 

Why do we need agile resilience? This question was raised at the Agile DC conference last month, where my topic was using CMMI to make agile stronger. A QA Director told me that she thought adding too much structure to agile would ruin the purity of the agile method.

“Ruin the purity of agile?” I replied, pressing my hand on my heart. “Madam, I am a gentleman!”

She laughed, but her statement raised a serious issue.

As I explained in my session, many practitioners of agile are concerned that a performance improvement framework like CMMI is contrary to the spirit of agile. But nothing could be further from the truth.

What is resilience, anyway? The formal definition says resilience is power or ability to return to the original form or position after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity. It is also described as the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity or the like; buoyancy.

I believe these are two very apt definitions of resilience, given what is happening in our market and the influence of some of the newer players – such as the federal government, and big defense contractors – who are demanding that their vendors “go agile.”

In my opinion, this why we need a resilient model. Right now, agile is a loose collection of methods and tools, by definition. And, yes, there’s a lot of fear in our industry that too much structure will cause problems.

But the simple truth is this. If we want agile to remain agile, we need to agree on a resilient model that can withstand all of the attempts of these new players to change our values. It is time to start building resilient agile architecture.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we have an industry model, because I’m not sure that is useful. The history of industry models are that they lead to certifications, assessments and examinations and so on and so forth. That is not useful. But I am suggesting that we have a loose framework that we can all agree to. And it starts with a philosophy.

As we all well know, agile is just something that you are. It’s a philosophy; it’s a way of thinking; it’s a way of life. To be agile is to adopt agile values, the values of collaboration of personal responsibility, of having the right team members, of failing fast, and all of the agile values from the Agile Manifesto and various articles and books that have been written by some of the great thinkers in our industry like Jim Highsmith, Ken Schwaber, Ron Jefferies, Jeff Sutherland, and others.

By contrast, the CMMI is not something you are. The CMMI is something you use to strengthen what you are. In the context of agile, the CMMI helps you strengthen what you are by helping you build a resilient framework.  And by embracing lessons of CMMI with agile or Waterfall or Spiral – or whatever your methodology of choice is – you move closer to being a great company.

The time is now for agile resilience.

Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI program.

What are the CMMI Generic Practices for?

Hey, CMMI Appraiser – why is it that we have to worry so much about these Generic Practices? Seems like a big headache to me - Jim W, Minneapolis, MN

Greetings, Jim! Thank you for submitting the first question to be answered in our new CMMI-TV series! Like this blog, CMMI-TV is a place where we can add value to the engineering and software development community by offering advice on engineering strategy, performance innovation and software process improvement. Below is a video clip with my answer to your question, followed by a synopsis of my response. Enjoy!

OVERVIEW

The CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), is a model that helps us build better software and run better projects.

The Generic Practices apply to all process areas in the CMMI – which is why they should have been named the Most Important Practices.

Regardless of what type of method, technique or process that you use, the Generic Practices can really help jump start the success of those practices.

The Generic Practices apply to activities that the organization performs, not necessarily the individual projects. The guidance provided by the Generic Practice includes but is not limited to:

SETTING EXPECTATIONS

• How long are our Sprints?
• What kind of retrospectives do we have?
• What kind of code reviews should we run?
• Should we comment our code, and how should we comment it?

PLANNING

• How many Sprints are we going to have?
• How many phases are we going to have?
• How many releases are we going to have?
• What kind of requirements management tools are we going to use?

ASSIGNING RESPONSIBILITY

• Who is going to be involved?
• When are they going to be involved?

PROVIDING TRAINING

• Are we providing training? For example, if I’m going to ask you to do Planning Poker and use it as a way to estimate the size of a project or a particular user story, do I plan to train you on how to use those tools?

MONITORING THE HEALTH OF THE PROCESS

• How is the process working?
• Are we getting value out of our sprints, phases and the tools that we are using, out of the techniques that we are employing?
• If we aren’t getting value, why not? And if not, let’s make them better!
• Are people actually using these processes?
• If they aren’t, why not?

MANAGEMENT

• Is management paying attention to all of this data?
• Are they doing something about it to make the company an even better company?

CONSTANTLY IMPROVING

• Are we constantly improving the processes?

Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec! 

Don't miss our CMMI Training class coming up in Virginia February 11-14, 2013
Introduction to CMMI-DEV v1.3. Register at www.broadswordsolutions.com

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI and performance improvement program.

How can the CMMI improve Agile methods?

At a recent Agile Leaders Network (ALN) meeting in Washington, D.C. on CMMI and Scrum,  the Lead Appraiser answered an attendee's question about how the CMMI can improve Agile methods.  Enjoy!

Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Don't miss our CMMI Training class coming up in Virginia February 11-14, 2013

Introduction to CMMI-DEV v1.3.  Register at www.broadswordsolutions.com

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI and performance improvement program.

The Art of CMMI: Energy

[Our good friend Shawn Rapjack, CMMI expert and seasoned consultant, is back with a another installation on CMMI based on Sun Tzu's "The Art of War: Energy."  We're excited that Shawn has agreed to share segments of his article with you here on "Ask the CMMI Appraiser"]

Continuing our ‘Art of CMMI’ discussion, let’s leap into the Art of War’s fifth chapter, ‘Energy,' where direct and indirect methods of warfare are discussed.  This ‘warfare’ concept translates to our CMMI software process improvement and appraisal preparation discussions.

In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory.

What does this mean for us?  

During a CMMI appraisal, appraisers review several kinds of evidence – ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’.  even though the new version of SCAMPI (v1.3) not longer specifically tasks us with capturing these two evidence types, in practice they still are important to understand.  

Direct evidence demonstrates adherence to a CMMI practice (its immediate products or outcomes).  Indirect evidence, though de-emphasized in CMMI v1.3, is no-less important!  Indirect evidence supports the direct artifacts – without it, an organization’s processes are incomplete.  For example, the Program Management Plan is a direct artifact substantiating many practices throughout the CMMI.  

Indirect evidence supporting the PMP includes its review schedule, document history, etc.

Let’s focus on the importance of indirect artifacts - and how they ‘secure victory’.  

Experienced, helpful appraisers look at how an organization actually produces artifacts, i.e., they focus on the underlying processes.  Creating a PMP is great! – But how did it come to be?  Was it written overnight?  Was its production anticipated?  Is it a logical, helpful document with stakeholder input?  Does the document evolve to meet organizational needs?  Indirect artifacts address these questions; they are a microcosm of your organization’s process approach and tell a story of how things get done.

Are indirect artifacts difficult to produce or hard to come by?  Nope!

Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.

The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle—you never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?

Indirect artifacts are natural byproducts of your daily processes.  There is a calendar event to review the PMP, right?  Include it as evidence!  There’s a sign-in sheet for stakeholder review?  Include it as evidence!  The PMP has a page documenting its history? Include it as evidence! 

Like this blog? Forward to your nearest engineering or software exec!

Don't miss our CMMI Training class coming up in Virginia February 11-14, 2013

Introduction to CMMI-DEV v1.3.  Register at www.broadswordsolutions.com

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI trainings and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students.

Visit www.broadswordsolutions.com for more information about running a successful CMMI and performance improvement program.