I have been working as a software consultant for more than 11 years. Because of that I am an eager supporter of lean principles and agile methods.
For a short period of time I was employed by Q-Labs, a company dedicated to process improvement within software development. However they seem to be stuck in a traditional thinking with a rigid requirements process and heavy project planning upfront, trying to be predictive instead of adaptive. And for some reason they keep promoting CMM/CMMI.
In their latest newsletter (in swedish) they describe how they made Intentia (now Lawson) become more efficient. The measures they suggested were clearly non-agile, focusing on prolonging the project planning period in the beginning of a project and making predictions about future plans. They also give them the advice to be less adaptive.
Being a company dedicated to software process improvement, I find it somewhat strange that they hardly even mention agile methods and processes on their web site. I bet that I can help Intentia become even more efficient using agile methods.
Links:
Q-Labs newsletter
There is a section about CMMI in Mary Poppendieck’s first book where she gives a “Lean version” of the basic assumptions in the CMMI’s definition of maturity:
CMMI Assumption 1: A system is best managed by disagregating it into identifiable work products that are transformed from an input to an output state to achieve specific goals.
Mary’s Lean version of Assumption 1: A mature organization looks at the whole system; it does not focus on optimizing disaggregated parts.
CMMI Assumption 2: A mature organization is one in which everything is carefully planned and then controlled to meet the plan.
Lean version of Assumption 2: A mature organization focuses on learning effectively an empowers the people who do the work to make decisions.
IMHO, CMMI is perhaps good at creating business opportunities for Management Consultants, but not very good at creating value for customer’s in an efficient way.
Gustav
Left by Gustav on August 11th, 2006