Happy New CMMI Year!

Dear Readers,

The New Year will bring many new CMMI opportunities for engineering and software leaders and professionals, and this CMMI Appraiser is excited to help you take advantage of it all! Whether you need training in the new CMMI 2.0, CMMI v1.3, or Agile/CMMI integration, feel free to check out our slate of popular CMMI and Agile classes in 2019.

See more info below! 

Class Title: Introduction to CMMI-DEV v1.3

Location: Washington, DC area

Date: February 19-21, 2019

For more information: visit the CMMI v1.3 registration page

Class Title: CMMI V2.0 Instructor Led One-day Upgrade Class

Location: Washington, DC area

Date: February 22, 2019

For more information: visit the CMMI V2.0 One-Day Upgrade registration page

Class Title: CMMI-DEV V2.0

Location: Washington, DC area

Date: April 1-3, 2019

For more information: visit the CMMI-DEV V2.0 registration page

Class Title: Agile/CMMI Integration Workshop

Location: Washington, DC area

Date: April 4-5, 2019

For more information: visit the Agile/CMMI Integration Workshop registration page

See you in class!

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

Jeff Dalton is a Certified SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, Certified CMMI Instructor, Certified Agile Assessor, author, keynote speaker, and consultant with years of real-world experience with the CMMI in all types of organizations. Jeff has taught thousands of students in CMMI training classes and has received an aggregate satisfaction score of 4.97 out of 5 from his students. His new book, Great Big Agile: an OS for Agile Leaders (© 2018), is now available on Amazon.

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

Can CMMI V2.0 help companies reinvigorate Performance Improvement?

CMMI 2.0 is here. Do you think the new instantiation of the model will reinvigorate the use of CMMI as a tool to help people get better, versus just getting business via contracts? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: On the most recent episode of the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast), Tom Cagley and this CMMI Appraiser are talking CMMI V2.0, and how to begin transitioning to and using the new Model upgrade. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 512.]

Tom, yes, it appears that CMMI 2.0 is capable of helping companies reinvigorate performance improvement. But I think there's going to be a fairly long transition period. In the last seven or eight years, the industry has spent an awful lot of time and money in gearing up for CMMI v1.3, and understanding finally how to pull it all together, and the new release changes that. CMMI 2.0 changes everything.

I think the transition period is going to be a little rough for companies that are doing reappraisals, which account for about 70% of all appraisals each year. In our case, about 20 or 30 companies that I'm working with are all asking me can they reappraise at CMMI v1.3, because they're just completely oriented around CMMI v1.3, and they don't want to have to make a change.

I also believe that the market for CMMI will continue to be strong in the contractor community and the corporate supplier community, due to mandates, as well as the many things the CMMI Institute is doing to increase awareness that CMMI V2.0 is a performance improvement model. I think we are going to see more and more companies adopting CMMI as an improvement model. And we’ll even see some other use usage modes.

For instance, I'm working with a company that recently bought eight of their largest competitors. They ate up the market. In the process of doing that, they wanted to use CMMI as a way to evaluate capabilities. Since then, we've been hearing from M&A houses in New York, asking us to help them evaluate mergers and acquisitions, using CMMI to evaluate capability. And they're not at all interested in a rating. They don't care about SCAMPI. They never even heard of it. They're looking for someone to go in and give them advice on how to use an improvement model like CMMI to establish a capability roadmap.

Another example: We're seeing a new program that's gone up with the FDA, the brainchild of Kirk Botula at the CMMI Institute, where the FDA has permitted the use of CMMI as an alternative to some of the audits that they were doing, mostly in the pharmaceutical industry. There are some Lead Appraisers specializing in that.

The trend is towards performance improvement. You are starting to see more and more organizations that don't care about ratings when adopting CMMI. I'm not sure that's a result of CMMI V2.0 as much as a result of the Institute reaching out and making that case actively. And for those organizations that respond to that message, I think you're going to see a lot of them adopting CMMI V2.0 as their standard, as opposed to CMMI v1.3.

For folks who are interested getting training on all of the changes in the new model, seats are already filling up for our CMMI 2.0 Training Class this Spring. Learn more about CMMI V2.0 Training, plus our optional Agile/CMMI Integration Workshop on April 1-5, 2019.

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #512. We'll be talking more about the changes in the new upgrade, CMMI V2.0, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

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 training classes 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.

Why Is CMMI V2.0 a Game-Changer?

Jeff, Why do you consider CMMIV2.0 a game-changer? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: This CMMI Appraiser has had the pleasure of being interviewed many times by Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about CMMI, Agile, and Performance Improvement. On the most recent episode, we're talking CMMI V2.0, and how to begin transitioning to and using the new Model upgrade. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 512.]

Tom,

The CMMI Institute is very serious about turning CMMI from a process model into a performance model -- though they haven't quite mastered it yet.

Even so, there has been a lot of progress in CMMI V2.0. In the old Model, CMMI v1.3, we had a bunch of vertical practices like Project Planning, Project Monitoring, and Technical Solutions -- and we still have some of those. But the way the practices are framed now, in V2.0, is much more organized around "threads." 

Previously, instead of threads, we had what you could almost consider “requirements.” These were aspects of the Model that seemed to be saying, “You must do this, you must do this, and you must do this.” It was up to you figure out how to instantiate these requirements at your company level in order to create threads from it so that each one actually manifested as a behavioral outcome, and you could say, "This is how our teams behave."

In CMMI V2.0, they really did a much better job than CMMI v1.3 in representing the "Practice Areas," as they call them now, and the practices within them, in more of a thread-based fashion. Now it's easier to look at it and at least make sense of what they were trying to do. To get to this point, the CMMI Institute re-architected the CMMI around four major areas for CMMI2.0: “Doing, Managing, Enabling, and Improving.”

I always tell my students that another word for process is “work.” Process isn't overhead. Process is actually how work is supposed to happen. Well, in the new Model upgrade, I think the CMMI Institute really took that to heart. Not only did they create the four large categories or areas, but they mapped threads to each area, resulting in 12 different threads. They're calling those “capabilities.” Capabilities are things like ensuring quality, for instance, or engineering and developing products. In CMMI V2.0, the practice areas are grouped together in a manner that the Institute best believed met the intent of that thread. 

This is a complete departure from v1.3. I think the architectural changes alone are a game-changer for those people who either need to implement CMMI for contractual purposes, or for just improvement purposes as they grow and get larger as companies.

If folks are interested getting training on all of the changes in the new model, we are hosting another CMMI 2.0 class this Spring. Feel free to learn more about “CMMI V2.0 Training! – Plus Optional Agile/CMMI Integration Workshop” on April 1-5, 2019.

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #512. We'll be talking more about the changes in the new upgrade, CMMI V2.0, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

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 training classes 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.

Why CMMI 2.0?

Jeff, There is a new CMMI in town. What's that all about? Why CMMI 2.0? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about CMMI V2.0, and how to begin transitioning to and using the new Model upgrade. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 512.]

Tom, as you know, the CMMI was developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) as is a process improvement framework for software and engineering systems, and is currently administered and positioned more as a performance improvement framework by the CMMI Institute. The model is utilized by organizations large and small across the globe to improve capabilities and performance, but there hadn't been an upgrade to CMMI since 2010. Change was overdue.

When the CMMI Institute was spun off by the SCI and Carnegie Mellon into a standalone entity, now owned by ISACA, they were handed an existing product. The challenge was that few people from the Software Engineering Institute made the switch over to the new organization, and so, for a long time, they were really just keeping up in operations mode. They moved over some of the QA folks who looked at appraisals, along with a couple of the technical staff folks, only one of whom remains.

The product they were handed was CMMI v1.3. Everybody in the industry knew that version 1.3 had issues, despite being the defacto standard among the federal government contractors. For starters, it was very academic-focused. I always joke with my classes that v1.3 reads like it was written by 20 PhDs and 25 attorneys.

I believe there was an honest effort to try to make it more clear. But I think what they ended up doing was making it harder to read in the end. It's a particular flaw that has always gotten in the way of more general acceptance.

Another challenge has been that the appraisal method of version 1.3 was pretty heavy duty. As a result, lot of company owners and directors weren't excited about doing CMMI. They wanted to get that accreditation or “CMMI certification” as they called it (the accurate terms is to achieve a "rating"), but found it very difficult.

So not only was the wording ambiguous in many of the 356 practices in Maturity Level 3, but it also was an appraisal method that demanded a very high documentary evidence standard. Every one of those 356 practices required an artifact of some sort. You could have an artifact that spread across many practices, but on the whole appraisals were an exercise in collecting, categorizing and scoring mostly artifacts, and then adding some affirmations or verbal statements towards the end.

This was considered a very heavy, expensive time consuming effort. Companies were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars – sometimes less, sometimes more – in order to achieve that rating, and much of that cost was the appraisal.

So, between somewhat ambiguously worded practices and the way they were architected in the model, and the way the appraisal method was conducted, there was cause for the industry to scream out and say: “Hey, the federal government is going to keep demanding this. This is too much for us and too expensive. We need a better solution.” And that was the driver for change.

Fortunately, the CMMI Institute is blessed by a truly visionary leader, Kirk Botula, for whom I have a great deal of respect. Not only is Kirk a musician, and a fine musician at that, but he has also got a really good eye for the industry, having run a software company prior to joining the Institute. He brought a real industry-focused, consumer-focused view to the CMMI Institute that never existed in the SCI, in my opinion.

The changes started slowly. The industry was slow to react to Kirk’s new kind of approach. They were a little shell-shocked, I think, when they were asked to find out what their customers really wanted. Kirk was masterful at pulling together focus groups. He's traveled the world talking to people, and did a lot of industry research to find out what is it that people want. Then the Institute enlisted the help of partners, lead appraisers, and instructors -- and everyone they could talk to who did this for a living – and got them all to come together and help create this new product. The result was version 2.0.

There was a lot of talk about, “Should this be version 1.4?” Kirk was very clear in saying: No, it shouldn't be. It should be something totally new, totally different. The team worked hard on it, and released a version 2.0 just a couple of months ago.

As of yet, no appraisals have been conducted, but the very first public training class was done a couple of weeks ago and I was fortunate enough to teach that first class. I got to be the first one to stand up and talk about the new model and what was great about it, and honestly, some things that weren't as good as I had hoped. The class went swimmingly, and it really looks like CMMI V2.0 is going to be a game-changer in the industry.

If folks are interested getting training on all of the changes in the new model, we are hosting another CMMI 2.0 class in February. Feel free to learn more about “CMMI V2.0 Training! – Plus Optional Agile/CMMI Integration Workshop” on April 1-5, 2019.

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #512. We'll be talking more about the changes in the new upgrade, CMMI V2.0, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

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 training classes 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.

SPaMCast Interview: What would you change that is affecting agile leadership?

Jeff, if you woke up tomorrow morning, and somebody handed you your cup of coffee, a cup of tea, and a magic wand, and said, “You have the power to change any two things affecting leadership in Agile organizations. What would these two things be? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: During the past several weeks, this CMMI Appraiser has been sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Today’s blog post is the final installment. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom, the first thing I would do is I would bestow a complete understanding of the nine core Agile values on all leaders. I'd give them the ability to demonstrate them through the way they acted and the way they performed. That’s the first thing I would do.

The second thing I would do is give those Agile leaders an understanding of self-organization and the counter-intuitive nature of it, and to learn to trust the power of self-organization so that their teams and their organization underneath them can be successful. I would give them that trust of self-organization.

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed the transcribed version of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. If you are interested in moving up in your organization that happens to be Agile, or are already leading an Agile organization, you are invited to take advantage of the free and open-space resources available at agilecxo.org, including “The Scrum Guide,” which you can use to help yourself understand how discipline can make Agile more powerful, as well as our model for agile leadership, the Agile Performance Holarchy.

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 training classes 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.

SPaMCast Interview: Is leadership more or less critical in agile organizations?

Jeff, when an organization is embracing Agile, is leadership more or less critical than in an organization embracing some other fundamental model? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom, Agile leadership is a lot like Agile itself. Agile is iterative, incremental and distributed. In an Agile organization, leadership is iterative, incremental and distributed. 

I have an article slated for publication next month in the Cutter IT Journal on this. I’m calling it the “Pedagogy Principal.” The notion of this article is that Agile leaders need to learn how to teach other Agile leaders, and those Agile Leaders need to teach other Agile leaders. In other words, what’s needed is a cascading leadership effect. The problem with agile organizations today is we are not teaching leaders how to teach other leaders. 

For your listeners, Tom, pedagogy is the science of teaching and teaching others how to teach. Short story: I come from a family of teachers. My brothers, sisters and parents are all teachers, and I was the renegade. I was the only who said, “I do not want to be a teacher.” I do a lot of teaching now. Go figure!

My father, who is 93 years old and is still doing his thing, still refuses to refer to what I do as teaching, because I was the renegade that didn’t get a teaching degree. He always asks me how my “seminars” are going. Let’s say I’m teaching a class at Carnegie Mellon this week. He will say, “How was your seminar Jeff? How did that seminar go?”

So I was brought up in this environment of education. As a result, I really believe that one of the things that we can address and fix with leadership is teaching them how to be teachers. Then they can get better at teaching their leaders, and understand how to cascade leadership down to the lowest levels of the organization by teaching them how to do it. Part of that is demonstration, and part is mentoring and coaching – and a big part is teaching. 

What I’m examining in this article is what kind of framework we can put in place to help leaders be teachers, and teach them how to teach others how to teach. I think that really is the opportunity: Teaching them how to teach other leaders.

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. We'll be talking more about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

For those interested in a deeper dive into learning about Agile Leadership, please visit agilecxo.org for white papers, infographics, podcasts, lighting lessons and performance models to help software and engineering executives guide their organizations to be more agile, from top to bottom.

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 training classes 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

SPaMCast Interview: How has adopting Holacracy changed your view on agile leadership?

Jeff, You recently leveraged, within your own firm, things like Holacracy. How has that changed your view on leadership? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom, you and I have talked about our Holacracy journey before. Yes, we are still practicing and getting better at that. It’s a long journey, but one of the things that was really interesting in our embracing of Holacracy has been my realization that it’s so much like an orchestra. So I wasn’t shocked when I realized that we were starting to be successful with it. I said, “This really reminds me of something!” It really reminded me of when I was younger and making my living playing in orchestras. 

There are a lot of similarities. There are very clear role descriptions. People step up to the responsibilities that they have. There's a form of quasi leadership that’s helping you through the process. So many of the concepts in Holacracy are similar to being a professional orchestra musician. It really helped us reinforce the things that I wanted to do with the company, and gave me a language.

When I was introducing a lot of these concepts with my own company, I was having trouble expressing it. I often said to them, "You know, it's like an orchestra. It’s like you’re a section leader, and you’re practicing scales!" And they would all look at me, like, “I get it. Jeff is a little bit eccentric and he’s off on a music binge again.” 

But the cool thing with Holacracy is that it gives me a language that everybody understands. Now when I talk about accountabilities and roles and circles, it's a clear metaphor that makes sense. So I think Holacracy has really helped us establish a language, helped us with the discipline, and helped me get clarity around what I really wanted to do as a firm.

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. We'll be talking more about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

http://spamcast.libsyn.com/spamcast-456-jeff-dalton-agile-leadership

For those interested in a deeper dive into learning about Agile Leadership, please visit agilecxo.org for white papers, infographics, podcasts and performance models to help software and engineering executives guide their organizations to be more agile, from top to bottom.

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 training classes 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.

SPaMCast Interview: How did you develop your philosophy for successful Agile leadership?

Jeff, How has your personal journey informed what you’ve come to believe is important for successful Agile leadership? Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom. I don’t know if we've ever talked about this, but I started my career as a musician. My first degree was in classical music. I started my career as a classical musician, and for the first ten years after college, I played in orchestras all around the world.

Playing orchestras, I learned a heck of a lot about self-organization. I learned about excellence, practicing, process, procedures, being Agile, using my ear to adjust constantly, and to improve myself iteratively and incrementally. I’ve given a couple of talks on this, about how having classical music training aligns so well with the current movement of organizational excellence.

Being in an orchestra was my first exposure to all of these things that I later came to know as agile values.

When I entered the computer science business, I almost forgot about my experience as a classical musician. I didn’t really make the connection at first, when I was 30 years old, about how these two things were so similar. But as my career progressed, I started to really make these connections and realized that this notion of self-organization and leadership were intertwined, and that iterative, incremental learning needed to be tied with discipline.

This is where I see a lot of Agile organizations missing the boat. They miss tying in with discipline. See, you’ve got this triangle of leadership, self-organization and discipline. These three things need together like a symphony, in a very orchestrated way, in order for a company to really see the all of the benefits of Agile and fly to the next level. The organizations that have this figured out really do experience success beyond what they ever imagined. 

So, Tom, I’ve come to where I am today because of those experiences. Starting out way back in 1980, when I graduated music school, and then when I went back to get a degree in Computer Science, I have been following this path in my career. It led me to become a leader in several software development organizations, and it taught me to focus on values and self-organization and real leadership.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t enjoy focusing on numbers and schedules and some of the more administrative things. I accommodate that by surrounding myself with people that are great at that. I think of myself as the conductor and they are the members of the orchestra that make things happen. I have this orchestral metaphor in my head all the time and I think that has had a lot to do where I ended up today.

#   #   #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. We'll be talking more about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

For those interested in a deeper dive into learning about Agile Leadership, you are invited to join me and other Agile leaders at The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit, hosted by AgileCxO.org on September 22nd in Washington, DC. I look forward to meeting many of you in person for the first time!

Click here to register for The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit.

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 training classes 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.

SPaMCast 456 Interview: What Guidelines Do You Recommend for Agile Leaders?

Jeff, If you were stopped on the street tomorrow afternoon by a CXO who said, "Hey, tell me two things that should be in a set of guidelines for someone leading," what would a couple of those be? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom, I would say the biggest and most important set of guidelines to help people in leadership roles would be around self-organization. I think that’s the mystery that so many leaders are still scratching their heads over: “How do I get performance from a self-organizing team without riding them and without providing egregious oversight?”

That would be one set of guidelines: How to scale self-organization.

You know I’m a big fan of this. We talked about this in the past. There are some models out there that are starting to get some traction at the team level. For leaders, however, things are different.

Quick aside. This notion of leadership and self-organization is really interesting. I’ve noticed that the people that are really advocating pure self-organization are advocating no leadership.

I don’t think “no leadership” is the way to go. I think we need leaders to help manage the empowerment mechanisms. I’m not saying leaders should be granting empowerment because that’s counter-intuitive. However, there’s an infrastructure that has to be put in place to manage empowerment. Leaders need to transform themselves to become empowerment managers, or infrastructure managers, let’s call it. They need to help manage the organization’s values so that they can train their people how to become truly self-organized.

That would be the second major set of guidelines in a model that leaders could really benefit from: How to set strategic goals and strategic direction. 

See, most leaders really struggle with this notion of creating a strategic plan that leads a self-organizing company through the journey of self-organization and transformation, and leads them to strong profits and strong product delivery. They really struggle to understand what a strategic plan looks like for something like that. So it would be helpful to have guidelines around using open space technologies, for instance, to help them really step through strategic planning efforts, and the management of that strategic plan, long-term. 

Those are the two areas that I would focus on, followed very closely by enterprise leadership and craftsmanship. Now, craftsmanship is all the rage these days in Agile circles. In my opinion, this is a fantastic thing that developers at the organic level that have gotten together and decided that craftsmanship is important.

I am completely in support of them doing that. But the only thing I would change is the scope of this idea. Craftsmanship doesn’t begin and end with development. It applies to business analysis. It applies to project management. It applies to all levels of leadership.

There isn’t a movement in leadership, as there should be. That would be the third set of guidelines that I would encourage any leader to focus on.

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. We'll be talking more about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

For those interested in a deeper dive into learning about Agile Leadership, you are invited to join me and other Agile leaders at The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit, hosted by AgileCxO.org on September 22nd in Washington, DC. I look forward to meeting many of you in person for the first time!

Click here to register for The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit.

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 training classes 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.

SPaMCast 456 Interview: Why haven’t we seen a model for Agile Leaders?

Jeff, with the plethora of leadership books, business books for CIOs – whether that’s paper or online – why haven’t we seen a model for leadership? Why haven’t we seen at least something that says, “Here are the things to think about,” whether it’s a model or a guide post, as you’ve called it? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[NOTE: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom,

That’s a really good question. I don’t know that I have a definitive answer for why no model exists for leaders, let alone Agile Leaders. You and I have both been leaders, and it seems to me that leaders have been reluctant to embrace anything like that. I don’t think they’ve even asked the industry for something like that. It could be that nobody has come out with a model that illuminates people in the way that they want to be illuminated. So I think there’s an opportunity, especially in the Agile space, for a leadership model or guide post.

Our friends at the Nationwide Insurance are doing some really neat things with this concept, however. They’ve created their 21 agile tea leaves, which they are applying not only to their teams but to their leaders. They’ve really done a nice job of organizing their leaders around this servant leadership idea, and adopting Agile values.

I would say when it comes to scaling Agile to the executive level, Nationwide is a pretty decent model for that. They are really doing some nice work. But again, I don’t think anybody has come out with an industry framework that really excites anybody. There’s room in the market for that.

And by the way, Kevin Fisher, AVP of the Application Development Center of Nationwide, will be one of our keynote speakers at the Agile Leadership Summit on September 22, 2017 in Washington, DC. [See below.]

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. We'll be talking more about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

For those interested in a deeper dive into learning about Agile Leadership, you are invited to join me and other Agile leaders at The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit, hosted by AgileCxO.org on September 22nd in Washington, DC. I look forward to meeting many of you in person for the first time!

Click here to register for The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit.

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 training classes 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.

SPaMCast Interview: Why don’t we have more effective Agile leaders?

Jeff, for anyone that’s been in the business for any length of time, we understand that good, solid leadership is important to drive, lead, help facilitate, and make a transformation happen. Why are we still, in many cases, stuck in the “Thou Shalt” mode as a leadership style, in terms of transformation? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom,

So true. It’s really interesting that things haven’t changed much in this regard. I was talking to client the other day, who said, “You have a really good job, and you get to do this year after year, because companies don’t change.”

It certainly seems as though we are dealing with some of the same issues that we were dealing with 20 years ago.

Why is that? I think part of it is that leaders don’t feel that change matters to them. Or they don’t believe that change applies to them. As a result, they sometimes insulate themselves from getting the help they need to make change happen.

The other component that’s missing from companies – particularly in the Agile space – is a leadership model for executives to refer to and lean on. They could really use something that lays out for them: “Here’s what great leaders focus on.”

I know I never had that. I was the CIO of two different companies, and I never had something that I could open up that read: “Here are the things that great CIOs and CTOs do, and here’s what you focus on. Here are the areas that are important. Here are the areas that you have to improve on.”

For a long time, we've needed a sort of a SAFe or ITIL or CMMI for leadership. But that just has not existed in the market.

So it's a combination of things. Leaders believe that change doesn’t apply to them, and refuse to get the help they need. And the industry hasn't provided a framework to guide leadership and show them, “Here’s what you have to improve on.”

In the absence of this kind of framework for leaders in Agile organizations, there is no one evaluating performance. It’s the wild west out there. And it's time for change.

#     #     #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. We'll be talking more about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

For those interested in a deeper dive into learning about Agile Leadership, you are invited to join me and other Agile leaders at The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit, hosted by AgileCxO.org on September 22nd in Washington, DC. I look forward to meeting many of you in person for the first time!

Click here to register for The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit.

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 training classes 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.

SPaMCast Interview: Are success and failure attributable to methodology or leadership?

Jeff, I have been recently asking people whether or not leadership is important to change. Is it true that failure really doesn’t have anything to do with Agile, non-Agile, RUP per se, it’s a leadership failure? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom, that’s a fantastic point and this is something I try to talk about in the speeches that I give. This entire discussion … Agile versus Waterfall versus RUP versus chaos … is missing the point. There are attributes of strong leadership and well-run organizations -- as well as weak leadership and poorly run organizations -- that exist regardless of what methodology we choose.

I remember giving a partner speech with one of the main participants of the Agile manifesto. I won’t name him here but he started out by saying, “Agile is better than Waterfall because Agile projects are always on time and customers are happy.”

You know, that’s a pretty interesting statement. I ran lots of great projects in the 80s and 90s, where my customer were happy and the project was on time and on budget. So what really strikes me is that the thing that makes Agile so powerful isn’t the frameworks or the methodologies that are out there today. Because SAFe, Scrum, DAD and XP are all fantastic ideas. I fully support them, and think my customers should use them. But it’s the values part that nobody is really talking about.

Back when I was running software teams in the 80s and 90s, I tried very hard to be transparent, collaborative, high trust, and to fail fast. If you remember rapid application development, I was a big proponent. Sure, we didn’t have Scrum back then. We didn’t have XP, and those things are great. But it's the values, and leading through the demonstration of values, that really gets you the bang for the buck as an organization.

I tell my clients, “You know what, if Waterfall makes sense to you and it makes sense for your business, you should do that. Just make sure the values are in place. Make sure you have high trust, fail fast, collaboration, transparency and visibility, etc.” 

Back the 80s, we had big posters of our plans and our requirements on the wall. I remember I used to put a thermometer up there, so people would always know, “Here’s what’s going on.”

Going back to 1994, I was leading a team that wrote the point-of-sale system for Sears. We wrote the world’s first touch screen system, Windows 1.0. I won’t get even to that nightmare, but one of the things we did is we had calendar on the wall. It was a tear-off calendar so every day we tore it off, and that was an indication that our deadline was coming up. We used to do these types of things. This was before Agile, was you know Agile with a capital A.

The point is that the differentiator for leaders is not the methods you use. It's not Agile, Waterfall, RUP, etc. It’s values. If you look back at who the great leaders were in your career, you’ll probably think of people who demonstrated values that are consistent with the nine core Agile values, some which I’ve listed. Values are what really matter. Those are the things leaders work with and focus on trying to strengthen, because without values, nothing’s going to change.

# # #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. We'll be talking more about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

For those interested in a deeper dive into learning about Agile Leadership, you are invited to join me and other Agile leaders at The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit, hosted by AgileCxO.org on September 22nd in Washington, DC. I look forward to meeting many of you in person for the first time!

Click here to register for The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit.

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 training classes 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.

SPaMCast Interview: What has to happen to get an organization to change?

Jeff, if we turn to leadership to make changes in an organization, what has to happen to actually get an organization to change? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

[Editor's Note: Over the coming weeks, this CMMI Appraiser will be sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Cast (SPaMCast) about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 456.]

Tom,

That’s such a great question because in the industry that we’re in, there’s a lot of model-based change management going on. Whether it’s SAFe or CMMI or ITIL, or even DAD or Scrum, a lot of executives are saying, “Let’s take a look at these models, and let’s tell our people to implement these models. Therefore, we shall be the change that we believe in.”

I’m sorry, but that’s been a failure. Of all the models that have been developed, I think the models developed in the Agile space have been the most successful. I have great, great admiration for the people that put those together, but they’ve all failed to make change happen.

In the software business, there’s a defect known as “type mismatch.” A type mismatch is when one data type tries to communicate with another data type and it blows up most programs. For instance, an integer tries to talk to a string inside of an application, and this creates a type mismatch.

Leaders are causing an organizational type mismatch by forcing Agile teams to use these models instead of seeking to understand and care about – not change – the way Agile teams do their work, and the values they uphold. We’ve got some fantastic things going on at the project level: Teams are being transparent. They are being Agile. They are collaborating. They are working very hard to live and breathe Agile values. Some have been almost militant about upholding Agile values.

But leadership is often completely oblivious to this! Especially in the government sector. They are asking for detailed, long-term project plans, Basis of Estimates that go out five years, and they’re asking requirements to be clearly defined in a 900-page stream of consciousness work product that nobody reads.

The problem is, they are treating their people in a very non-Agile, non-transparent, non-collaborative, low-trust way. They’re beating their people up like they always have.

It’s clear that these frameworks have not changed that behavior. Instead, I believe they need to focus on a framework that aligns Agile values with the Agile ceremonies that Agile teams are using, so that they can be understood and made better. Without this type of approach, management is trying to push a rope uphill.

You work in this business too, Tom. You know you can have the most beautiful Scrum team on the planet, a work of art. We used to say that back in my Ernst & Young days: “We’ve produced a work of art, but nobody noticed!”

When nobody notices, and management isn’t on board, we really have this type mismatch, which creates a lot of friction and unhappiness in the organization. It mostly affects credibility and productivity of the teams.

I believe that if we can conquer this leadership issue in the Agile space, we can take it to a whole new level that’s no one even anticipated.

#        #        #

I hope my readers have enjoyed this segment of my interview with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast #456. We'll be talking more about leadership, and whether leadership is more or less important in today’s Agile world, in the next segment. Please check back soon.

For those interested in a deeper dive into learning about Agile Leadership, you are invited to join me and other Agile leaders at The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit, hosted by AgileCxO.org on September 22nd in Washington, DC. I look forward to meeting many of you in person for the first time!

Here's how to register for The 2017 Agile Leadership Summit.

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 training classes 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.

What is the Capability Challenge?

Dear Readers, below is an excerpt from my recent interview with celebrating podcaster Tom Cagley of SPaMCAST, to let folks know about the CMMI Institute’s Capability Counts 2016 ongoing webinar series. Enjoy! ~ the CMMI Appraiser

Jeff, what is the Capability Challenge and how did it come about?

Well, Tom, it’s great to talk to you again. I was thinking that you and I have done online interviews many times, and have only met in person once. It’s nice to see you again in this virtual way.

The Capability Challenge was an idea that came up when we were doing some work at the CMMI Institute, planning for the Capability Counts 2016 conference, which takes place in Annapolis, MD on May 10-12, 2016.

Register for Capability Counts 2016 by March 11, 2016 and save $200.

The way it came about was, we started with a question: How could we give everyone in the industry access to the some of the many, many great stories out there, so that they can learn from them, and grow?

We thought, you know something, this really would be useful for the industry. So how we could give some of these people a platform to tell their stories? Webinars were a viable option, and so was the stage at Capability Counts 2016. And then we took it to the next level and said, wouldn’t it be fun to have a competition that takes place online AND in person, and is judged by a live audience? That’s how we came up with this idea of the Capability Challenge.

Tom: So how does the Capability Challenge work?

Jeff: On a series of webinars, and finally on stage, in person, people will tell their stories about what they did that was great, what kind of great results they got using the CMMI and other techniques. At the end of each presentation, the audience will vote for the winner. The story that gets the largest percentage of votes on each webinar, wins. So, each of the four webinars will have one victor, and the four of them will have the opportunity to speak in front of the entire capability conference in a plenary presentation. They’ll get to tell their story in front of an audience of government employees, purchasing agents and people that are professions in the process improvement and software and engineering worlds. The audience will vote using their cell phones. And the winner will be announced at the end of the conference as the 2016 Capability Challenge champion.

Tom: What you don't see me doing is rubbing my hands together! Do you see this becoming a little bit of blood sport?

Jeff: (Laughing) Well, you know I haven’t considered that, but would be something if people would get that excited about it.

We really think people will be excited to participate as audience members. The kind of stories being told here are stories of companies that have great cultures and companies that do great things. And, I’ve noticed, companies that do great things want to learn from one another. They don’t want to compete at that level. They want to learn from one another. That’s another great benefit of being a presenter. Some of the winners are going to find out that the other presentations that they were competing against are just as interesting and just as exciting and just as results-oriented as the stories they told. It’s a good opportunity for everybody to learn from everybody else in our community.

Tom: So, if you’ve gotten to this level, you’ve actually done something fantastic within your own company to begin with. When they go head-to-head, that’s when the most different, the most interesting, the best emerges?

Jeff: Yes. Each of the contestants –

Tom: Gladiators. Let’s just call them gladiators. Kidding.

Jeff: Well, we’ll have the world-famous Tom Cagley moderating, and maybe acting as a referee, getting in between all of these people that are competing. Tom, you’re sort of like in the boxing match. You’re keeping people safe as possible, and you’ll be doing it in interview style! That’s the reason we asked you to come. We know you can evoke the best stories from of our contestants. With all of the SPaMCAST interviews you’ve done now, you’re an expert at pulling out information from people.

Tom: Well, I’m going to have fun doing that and I hope everyone else does too!

Jeff: Here's how to join the fun:

 

What:     2016 Capability Challenge Webinar Series: Round 1

When:    December 15th at 11 a.m. EST 

Sign up: Click here

[Check back soon for the next interview excerpt about Capability Counts 2016!]

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.

SPaMCast Question #7: What one big thing can we do to become a great company?

[NOTE: Over the past few weeks, this CMMI Appraiser has been sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast about whether agile is resilient – i.e., whether it will be able to spring back into shape after being bound or compressed by the pressures of development and support – and how frameworks like the CMMI can be used to make agile more resilient. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 296.]

Jeff, give us the key to being a great company. Tell us what this one big thing is and we’ll do it. Is this one big thing CMMI? Is this one big thing agile? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast 

Tom, when people ask me what one BIG thing they need to do to become a great company, my response is always the same: It’s not about big things. It's about LITTLE things.

For example, in my travels, when I meet CEOs, VPs, Directors, and Quality Assurance Managers from a wide variety of companies, large and small, I ask, “What would it be like if everybody on our team knew exactly what was expected of them?”

This is one of those little things that cause people to shake their heads and say, “What do you mean by that?”

And I say, well, think about what would happen if you walked through the company and you literally ask ten developers, “How long are your sprints? How many sprints in a release? When do you do your retrospectives?” If you just ask those simple questions, you'll get ten different answers. This happens everywhere because it is a very typical kind of behavior. And it is an example of the kind of behavior that can be improved with one single practice in the CMMI.

But the goal is not necessarily to adopt CMMI or embrace agile.  The goal is to consolidate the mental model of the members of your team so that everybody is on the same page. It's a little thing, but if we can do that, we can enhance productivity dramatically, without a lot of overhead.

In the context of agile, the CMMI helps you strengthen your way of doing what you do, by helping you build a resilient framework. By embracing lessons of CMMI with agile – or Waterfall, Spiral, or whatever your methodology of choice is – and building a resilient framework, you move closer to being a great company.

Those interested in learning more about using CMMI and agile to be a great company are invited to participate in our upcoming Webinar:

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives” (in conjunction with QUEST 2015)
Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 12-1PM EDT.
Click here to register for the webinar.

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.

SPaMCast Question #6: What does it look like when an organization has improved productivity?

[NOTE: Over the past few weeks, the CMMI Appraiser has been sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast about whether agile is resilient – i.e., whether it will be able to spring back into shape after being bound or compressed by the pressures of development and support – and how frameworks like the CMMI can be used to make agile more resilient. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 296.]

[NOTE II: In today’s post, Tom is following up on a question about the benefits of using agile and CMMI together to achieve higher quality, faster delivery, and predictable, repeatable results.]

Jeff, you say that by focusing on changing behaviors, organizations can be doubling and tripling productivity. How does an organization see that? What is that? Suddenly, more things getting done? More value? Less people? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast

Tom, what organizations will see is a great opportunity to take on more work. That’s what everybody wants, because the more productive they are, the more they more value they can provide for their customers, at cost that everybody is comfortable with.

You know, I’ve never been an advocate of cutting costs necessarily. To me, value is what’s most important. Value is what customers want, and will pay for. There is no shortage of value to be delivered, and no shortage of work to be done. If we are going to meet the demand, we need to learn to change behaviors, so that the people we have can deliver more value. This is not the time to cut costs.

So, you ask, how does a company do this? Well, let’s say you were going to take a large, chaotic, unproductive organization, and transform it into a great company. You have a vision for how this will happen – by delivering more value than your competitors. The way you are going to deliver more value is by getting better at what you are ALREADY doing.

Everyone knows, there is no silver bullet for success in this industry. But if it were me in charge of this turnaround, I’d use agile methods within a CMMI framework to put my company on the path to greatness. Just by applying a few simple concepts, I would be able to take on more work and deliver more value with the same amount of resources as the competitor might have.

I’ll be talking more about this concept of using agile and CMMI on upcoming webinars. I would love to have all perspectives join me by registering below:

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives”

Thursday, September 11, 2014 from 1-2PM EDT.

Click here to register for the webinar.

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives” (in conjunction with QUEST 2015)

Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 12-1PM EDT.

Click here to register for the webinar.

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.

SPaMCast Question #5: How do we stop the Agile-CMMI mismatch from happening?

[NOTE: Over the past few weeks, the CMMI Appraiser has been sharing snippets from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast about whether agile is resilient – i.e., whether it will be able to spring back into shape after being bound or compressed by the pressures of development and support – and how frameworks like the CMMI can be used to make agile more resilient. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 296.]

[NOTE II: In today’s post, Tom is following up on a question about the perceived type mismatch between agile and process improvement models like CMMI, to which we explained that agile and CMMI are all about the same thing: solving problems.]

Jeff, if agile and CMMI are all about solving problems, how do we stop this mismatch from happening? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast 

Tom, I've become very passionate about this topic over the last five or six years. You're probably familiar with some of the articles and books written about how agile and CMMI can cohesively work together. Several of our agileCMMI publications are available on our web site, which will give people a comprehensive understanding of our view. In a nutshell, there is no conflict between CMMI and agile.  They can -- and do -- peacefully coexist.

Times have changed. Our industry is starting to realize there is no conflict between agile and CMMI. Now, people are starting to say, “You know what? Let's use the CMMI as it was intended to be used, not to get a certification, not as tool to develop processes, which is how in the past so many people use it. No, let’s use CMMI as a tool to make what we're doing already even better.”

And so, the first step is to decide as a company that we want to have these agile values. We want have values of trust and cohesion and all of these things that are driven by the agile manifesto.

Once we have decided this, then we need to implement the solution. And this is exactly where the CMMI becomes so important, because now we've got this really rich and robust tool set. In fact, we’ve got the richest and most robust tool set in the world for this subject. So let’s make the decision to use it to improve and strengthen what we have in place. We can have predictability instead of chaos and all of the wonderful things that CMMI was intended to solve. 

Notice I didn't say, "does solve," because so many companies have taken an inappropriate approach to adopting CMMI. But with a proper adoption of the Model, you can bring robustness to whatever process it is that you decided to implement.

And so I've made a few adjustments with how I talk about getting CMMI and agile to work together. I've changed my language so that I don't often use the word “process” any more when talking to clients. Now I use the word “behavior.”  I'm saying, "Let’s use this CMMI to increase the resilience of the behaviors that we want to see.”

I'll give you an example. Let's say a company would like their team to use Planning Poker (which by the way I think is a great tool).  We’ll use the CMMI to ensure that Planning Poker is giving us the results we want to get, as well as the repeatability of these results. Our focus will be on making sure that everybody's trained and everybody's using it.  That way, we can get maximum value out of CMMI, which means we're changing behaviors and doubling or tripling the productivity of our people.

There's a lot more to share on this topic.  As I said, I've very passionate about it!  For those who would like to know more, we’re presenting the following upcoming webinars on the subject, and would welcome their participation:

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives”

Thursday, September 11, 2014 from 1-2PM EDT.

Click here to register for the webinar.

“Agile Resiliency Scaling Agile so that it Thrives and Survives” (in conjunction with QUEST 2015)

Wednesday, September 17, 2014 from 12-1PM EDT

Click here to register for the webinar.

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.

SPaMCast Question #3: Is there a type mismatch organizationally between agile and process improvement methods like CMMI?

[NOTE: Over the past several days, the CMMI Appraiser has been sharing excerpts from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast about whether agile is resilient – i.e., whether it will be able to spring back into shape after being bound or compressed by the pressures of development and support – and how frameworks like the CMMI can be used to make agile more resilient. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 296.] 

Jeff, One of the terms that you used for the imbalance between the way managers versus developers see agile was a “bottom-up, top-down mismatch.” How do we start to take that apart and make sure that there's not a mismatch but some sort of meeting of the minds? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast 

That's a fantastic question, Tom. Yes, there is a type mismatch organizationally between agile, where agility is an aspirational concept, and process improvement methods like CMMI, which are operational in nature. On the one hand, you have engineers at the lowest level of the organization trying to push values uphill. And on the other you have the C-suite pushing down the process improvement Model without getting the team to own it.

So we have this type mismatch of aspirational versus operational, and I'll tell you, Tom, it ain’t pretty!

Let me give you an example. The agile manifesto guides us to adopt certain values. Those values, as we all know, are to collaborate with our customers, to have openness, to have courage, to have trust in our organization, to be iterative and incremental. These are values that companies need to adopt. But here’s the problem: We're seeing these values being adopted at the team level, whereas they really need to be adopted in the C-suite. The CEOs, CIOs, CTOs of companies should adopt the values and drive them down throughout the organization so that the culture of the company adopts those values. But that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing it being adopted at the lowest levels of the company – and they are trying to push those values uphill. That’s not sustainable.

Conversely, process improvement methods like CMMI, which are operational in nature not aspirational, are being driven from the C-suite, and not being driven at the lowest part of the organization where the operational activities take place.

This is our great challenge. As an industry, organizationally, we are inverted. This adds tons of overhead and unneeded activity. To fix it we have to start working with our executive teams to start, not on agile, not on CMMI, but on values. We have to start working with them to help them really understand that it's values that drive everything in the company, and values are way more than a poster on the wall.

Our values go right to the core of why we do what we do, and what kind of company we want to be.  That's why it's so important for the C-suite to get this right.

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.

SPaMCast Question #9: What would you change about agile and the CMMI?

[NOTE: Over the past several days, the CMMI Appraiser has been sharing snippets from a recent conversation with Tom Cagley on SPaMCast about how the CMMI is fully compatible with Scrum, and can be used to improve agile methods, making the investment in agile both powerful and productive. Listen to the full interview at SPaMCast 176.]

Jeff, If you woke up tomorrow morning, and someone handed you a cup of coffee and a magic wand, and said you could change any two things in the CMMI and agile world, what would they be and why? ~ Tom Cagley, SPaMCast 

Tom, the #1 thing I would change in the CMMI world is the focus on achieving Maturity Levels. I would reduce that, and increase the focus on people using the CMMI to become a great company. This is a matter of education. I would change the perception of the model from one that is a “compliance” model to one that is a tool-set to solve most of our strategic problems.

After getting zapped by my wand, the leader of every organization would understand that adopting the CMMI is all about solving business problems. It’s not about documents, forms, certificates or ratings. It’s about adopting a model that's about how great organizations perform, which in turn is about living a great life.

Then I’d turn my wand on the agile world. There is a problem with the way companies interact with agile teams, especially around the way contracts and finance people manage projects. I’d change the perception of agile with upper management, and I would also change the perception of upper management with agile teams.

To illustrate why, I have a funny story. Recently, at a major automotive manufacturer, I taught an agile CMMI training class to two different groups. One was a group of engineers, and one was a group of managers. It became clear right away that their perception of each other was completely wrong.

In the first agile CMMI training class, the engineers complained about every decision that their managers made, as well as their strategy and tactics. In the second agile CMMI training class, management complained about engineers not giving them good information.

Sitting on my perch atop both groups of trainees, it was obvious to see how to fix the problem. If I could zap them with my magic wand, you’d see agile teams and management teams talking to each other. Really talking! They would have good business conversations about how they are going to run their business, without getting all caught up in ego, agile purity or the blame-game.

And the dust from my wand would make them joyful, because they would be working side-by-side in a spirit of ongoing celebration in their quest to become a great company.  OK.....maybe that's too much information!

But here's the real magic, Tom: you don’t need a wand to make it happen. You need a strong desire to improve on what you’re already doing.  If I woke up tomorrow and there was no magic wand, I'd do the same thing I always do.  I'd take the best of both models.  I'd adopt a flexible, agile approach to the CMMI, that fits within my company's particular situation.

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.