Recently I came across an interesting article from SEI at Carnegie Mellon. Having spent a significant amount of time with companies using CMM, ISO, CMMI, Agile etc. at various levels of the organization it’s rather intriguing to consider weaving these tools together.
CMMI and Agile are compatible. At the project level, CMMI focuses at a high level of abstraction on what projects do, not on what development methodology is used, while Agile methods focus on how projects develop products. Therefore, CMMI and Agile methods can co-exist.
Theorhetically speaking combining CMMI and Agile is “possible” but realisitically is it happening?
Absolutely! It makes me cringe when I hear comments around, “we can’t use an Agile framework because we do X” or similarly, “we’re Agile so we can’t do Y”. The fact of the matter is that if you drill down there’s a lot of overlap occuring in the real world. Scott Ambler over at Amblysoft has compiled some rather interesting data through various surveys and recently spoke on the Agile Toolkits Podcast (so-so sound quality). Glad to see someone dispelling some of the rhetoric on both sides…
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You can also read more on this issue in our recent article “CMMI and Agile: Opposites Attract” at: http://www.executivebrief.com/article/cmmi-and-agile-opposites-attract/.
right on the money,
there’s no reason why agile and CMMI can’t coexist.
the reason the agile guys get so upset by the notion of CMMI is that historically it’s been used to create extremely inefficient and bureaucratic processes, but the whole point is that CMMI really just test whether you’re following processes and mentoring to improve them, it doesn’t really dictate my processes to use…
Jeff
Some good research articles on Agile and CMMi if you’re willing to pay up. More on this here: http://agile-project-management.net/tips-for-agile-success-from-the-experts/