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This practice doesn't tell you what life cycle you have to use. You can use
Wa t e r f a l l , I n c re m e n t a l , S p i r a l , o r y o u r o w n h y b r i d d e f i n e d l i f e c y c l e . T h i s
decision is up to you and should be made based on agreed-to and docu-
mented life cycles that make sense within your organization. 10 For more
information on Agile life cycles, refer to [24].
If you are an Agile organization, you might wonder why you should care
about the life cycle. Often, small Agile organizations don't worry about
defining their life cycle. However, a defined life cycle becomes increasingly
important as your organization grows. When you start to have more project
artifacts being developed on both the management and engineering side,
having a consistent life-cycle view can help your project keep its manage-
ment and engineering sides communicating more effectively.
This is why once you decide on a life cycle, you want to train people in all
parts of the organization how to align their work with that life cycle. This
includes both engineering work such as task lists maintained by development
team members, and project management artifacts, such as a master schedule.
This is an example why project leaders need to be aware of decisions to use an
Agile approach. Engineering artifacts and project management artifacts must
both align with the life cycle chosen. 11 The CMMI model helps us by bringing
this important practice to light.
LESSON 4
By keeping people on the project aware of the purpose of a life cycle, we
can help improve communication across the project. This is an area where
the CMMI can help an Agile organization as it grows.
At BOND, training the project managers in Agile management fundamentals
avoided a scenario I have observed in many large organizations where engi-
neering has decided to go Agile (maybe “stealth Agile”), but project
management is unaware or doesn't realize the consequences of this decision.
A symptom of this scenario is the “5000-line detailed master schedule”
developed up front on the project management side of the house, and an
engineering organization that says it plans to use Agile techniques.
10. Refer to Specific Practice 1.2 of the OPD Process Area, which states: “Establish Life Cycle Model
Descriptions.”
11. Consequences of misalignment of management artifacts with engineering work and what you can do
about it are discussed further in the GEAR case study in Chapter 7.
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