CMMI, the Agile Way?

  Agile   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   ProjectsAtWork  

Can you formalize your processes and still maintain an Agile culture? More specifically, can Agile principles coexist alongside a Capability Maturity Model Integration program? Here is how once organization has embraced both its CMMI journey and Agile ways to achieve new levels of success.

Nothing sounds like more of an Agile culture killer than to formalize your processes and introduce CMMI into the equation, but that’s exactly what we’ve been doing at Agilex. Specifically, we have been codifying our development and delivery processes over the past year for several important reasons:

1. Logical maturity step as we move away from our past reliance on tribal knowledge
2. Preparing ourselves for future growth and scale
3. Positioning ourselves for a CMMI Level 3 appraisal

So, how do you formalize your processes and procedures yet maintain the agile/lean culture?

This was the topic that I was recently asked to address during the keynote session for the 2014 SEPG (Software Engineering Process Group) North America conference, which examined how CMMI and Agile can co-exist and maybe even thrive. I wanted to share some key points for those that missed the session (slides available here) as I believe that there is something to learn from our experience.??

To answer the question, you take an agile approach.??

As background, Agilex is still a …

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