Thursday, July 23, 2015

Why is agile in danger?


Why do you say agile is in danger? I saw your Tweet ~ @Cecil66


Hey, @Cecil66,

What I mean is that the market for agile services is changing. No longer will we be able to focus on small projects. All of a sudden these HUGE organizations with thousands and thousands of IT professionals are going to be attempting to transition over to agile methods very quickly. And some of these organizations, like General Motors, have declared that they’re going to do this almost instantaneously. You’re darn right agile is in danger!


Those of you who are at least my age remember the old TV series, “Lost in Space,” with the robot that walked around yelling, “Danger, danger, danger, Will Robinson.”

We have the same need to raise the alarm today. Agile is going to change. As a matter of fact, in Detroit where I live, I do a great deal of work with the Big 3 auto suppliers. We have an expression that suppliers don’t change GM, GM changes suppliers. You can be guaranteed that when these big players start to get into the market, they’re going to start trade groups that are going to populate boards and academia and they’re going to start coming out with all kinds of definition around what agile should be and how you should do it.

Think about what this means for the industry. Large scale adopters like General Motors, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have historically have drawn the standard. In other words, where most of the money comes from – that’s who gets to control the standard. And agile, being an organically grown, small-team focused, collaborative software development set of methods, is now going to be completely dominated by these really large organizations.

What can we do to stop the threat?  The answer is simple -- but not easy.  Build a resilient model that will withstand influence and keep agile the way it is today.

CMMI is a great tool for that. When adopted properly, CMMI is the perfect tool for making agile scale across the enterprise. CMMI gives you the ability to make immediate improvements that strengthen agile in your company, which shores it up for wider adoption. We call this "Agile Resiliency," a proven strategy for scaling agile by strengthening and reinforcing agile values, methods, and techniques.

Learn more by registering for one of our FREE webinar presentations of "Everything You Need to Know: Agile Resiliency!"

Whichever presentation date you choose, you’ll come away from the Webinar with actionable tips for using the “Agile Resilience Architecture" to help drive quality and performance improvement across the board, including how to bring greater clarity and strength to Scrum ceremonies, and how to strengthen the understanding, adoption, and continuous improvement of the agile values and behaviors in your organization.  We’ll show you how integrating the architectural strengths of the CMMI with your agile approach can help you make agile resilient enough to scale and thrive.

Hope to see you on an "Agile Resiliency" webinar!

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

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, ScrumMaster, author, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff pioneered agileCMMI, the leading methodology for incremental and iterative process improvement. He 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.

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