The What More Than The How

I read a really good blog post on Mike Cottmeyer's Leading Agile blog titled "Why the Re-think?". I originally found Mike's blog via a link on Twitter (if you're on Twitter, I'm michael_maham, if you're not on Twitter, you're missing a great stream of information)

It is on getting the important things right- not a methodology or process improvement for their own sakes (the HOWS) , but because you're trying get value delivered to your customer (the WHAT).

One quote really stood out to me: "Its the value behind the practices... the WHAT behind the HOW... that is really important. We believe this is the secret to sustainable agile adoption in the enterprise."

I think the last sentence understates the case. It's not just the the secret to sustainable agile adoption (or CMMi based improvement or any other process improvement), but is the secret to sustaining your business. Great businesses know that- even as they are trying to find the next WHAT or a better HOW they don't lose sight of continuing to deliver that value to the customers. If a new WHAT is too fanciful, it won't benefit customers and should be dropped. If a new HOW delays, rather than delivers, value to the customer, it is not right for them. Even if that HOW has a fancy label like "Agile" or "best practice".

Fortunately, for those of interested in the HOW, when we keep our eyes on the goal of delivering value, there are lots of improvements devoted teams can make that really are remarkable and don't become dogmatic headaches.

The Mature Agile Organization

Another post I had on Borland's Agile Transformations blog:

Here's a quick note about a recently published technical note from the SEI: CMMi or Agile: Why Not Embrace Both? There's talk about it from some of the authors: David Anderson, Hillel Glazer and Jeff Dalton. I saw them and Mike Konrad discuss the draft at an impromptu session at last year's SEPG Conference and am heartened to see the progress being made in the communities working together.

I'll have some more thoughts on the technical note itself, but a bigger question in your mind may be "CMMi and Agile? Those can't go together." I heard that comment from a colleague the other night at dinner. I disagreed and my answer was "A poorly implemented CMMi based process improvement- one that mistakes the model for a process description and that doesn't keep a firm eye on the goal of delivering business value- won't be very Agile. And, a poorly implemented Agile based improvement effort- one that doesn't recognize the amount of discipline required, for example, or doesn't address what's necessary to scale up to an enterprise level- won't look good from a CMMi view. But, I don't want either one of those things!"

Do you agree that there's value to an Agile organization in looking at the CMMi?

Originally posted by Michael Maham on December 16, 2008 at http://borland.typepad.com/agile_transformation/2008/12/the-mature-agile-organization.html