Bringing Process Maturity to Agile Organizations—Part II - Integrating CMMI and Agile Development - page 88

For this reason, at BOND I pushed the organization to provide a clear ratio-
nale in training for any new activities added. This forced the process
improvement team not to merely document processes, but to determine the
right processes for this organization.
I wanted to ensure we had irrefutable evidence as to why any new activity
was being added to the existing processes. I made it clear to the process
working groups that using the argument that the CMMI required it was an
unacceptable argument. This did result in added effort on the part of the
working groups—but it also miti-
gated the risk of damaging the
existing successful culture in the
company, which was a requirement
from Senior Management.

Pause, Reflect, and Glance Forward
It is not uncommon to see a gap analy-
sis conducted solely against the
process descriptions in an organiza-
tion, rather than against the real
behavior. While this type of gap analy-
sis can make sense in certain
situations, as we move forward we
will see why real sustained improve-
ment results primarily from actions
taken based on insights learned from
observing how the organization really
operates. We will also see that the
most valuable observations are those
found when the organization is oper-
ating during times of stress.

I find that I must constantly remind
those on process improvement teams
that the model was always intended
to be used as a tool to help us reason
about our processes, not as a list of
mandated practices. Unfortunately,
the mandated approach is the way
too many organizations use the
model today.
Why do we continually add some-
thing new? I believe it is often easier
to just write down an activity in the
documented process and be done
with it when we feel the goal is to get
processes defined and deployed that comply with the CMMI. Talking to the
people in the organization who will be asked to use that process and digging
deeper to uncover a potentially more effective implementation of the prac-
tice takes time. However, this effort can be the most valuable time spent by
process improvement teams.

This is not to say that there won't be cases where new practices are required
along with behavior changes. We found this to be the case at BOND. As suc-
cessful as this organization was, by digging and finding the real processes a
major side benefit of this activity was also realized. We uncovered the real
process weaknesses that needed to be addressed to benefit the organization.