Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This is an example of digging for the real process that is followed to
achieve the intent of a given practice. At BOND after this discussion by the
Ve r i f i c a t i o n P r o c e s s A r e a T W G , i t w a s d e c i d e d t h a t t h e p r o c e s s d i d n e e d t o
be documented, but that it wasn't an alternate practice at all like first
thought.
They were just using different “how to” techniques to “share information
across the team” and “peer review” products. While this had been a concern
early in preparing for the formal appraisal, it turned out there were no issues
raised during the formal appraisal about peer reviews at BOND.
“Convenient, but False Arguments”
While BOND was successful, no company is perfect. Therefore, as you ask
the intent question and conduct related discussions, I recommend that multi-
ple people participate, including Agile knowledgeable and CMMI
knowledgeable people, and others that might be independent of the organi-
zation to ensure the group is not creating “convenient, but false arguments.”
An example of a “convenient, but false argument” would be an organization
that claims it does continuous team reviews on its products, and/or frequent
and early product demonstrations with the customer, but doesn't follow
through in a disciplined way when conducting these activities.
CAUTION
Beware of “Convenient, but False Arguments”
This situation can usually be uncovered by asking questions to determine if
there is a related problem in the organization.
7
4.11 Tailored TWG Techniques and Lessons at BOND
Let us now discuss a few more key techniques used at BOND in conducting
the TWGs to document and deploy Agile processes along with a few lessons
we learned to help the TWGs run more effectively. Among these techniques
and lessons you will see more examples of asking questions and digging lead-
ing to more typical Agile “how-tos” that often just needed to be documented.
7. Another example of a “convenient, but false argument” is provided in the NANO case study in Chapter 6
related to the need for training (GP 2.5).
