A starting point for a discussion on marrying Agile methods and CMMI.Blaming CMMI is just another symptom … of LCPBCs
Posted by agilecmmi on Apr 4, 2010 in Blame, CMMI in a box, Culture, LCPBC, Level-Chasing, Pathological Box-Checkers, Perf, Performance, TQM, lean, value | 4 comments
Stop blaming CMMI for bad processes. Stop blaming CMMI for not getting real value from performance improvement efforts. Used correctly, CMMI fixes processes, doesn’t make bad processes. Bad processes are a symptom of using CMMI incorrectly and blaming CMMI is to run away from the true issues. The true issues are that the organization/company doesn’t have a culture to support high performance results long before anyone thought to use CMMI.
This is most typical of level-chasing pathological box-checkers who want ratings at any expense to effectiveness, morale or efficiency.
You can always tell these types of organizations from those who truly want to improve. Level-chasing pathological box-checkers (LCPBCs) don’t know what their own processes are, and when they start to look they don’t like what they see but refuse to do anything progressive about their ineffective, inefficient, and otherwise broken processes. LCPBCs often rule by fear in one form or another; they don’t practice TQM, don’t employ Lean principles, don’t value when people challenge the status quo, don’t value the expertise of people not in powerful positions, and don’t empower their people to make decisions or to take responsibility for the entirety of the health and well-being of the organization. LCPBCs are also easily picked out of a crowd by their belief that you can improve performance without changing anything difficult and by limiting whatever changes might happen to the technical staff alone. You’ll often find them hunting for “CMMI in a box” (or even “agile in a box”) and they’re looking to do it cheap, fast, and start “right now!”.
True, that some executives are LCPBCs because they don’t know any better, but there’s hope for those executives who are interested in making informed decisions. Others are doomed to low returns and continued recurring process (and appraisal) costs. Slapping CMMI on top of such a discordant, caustic, corroded, and sick culture will only make things worse. And, blaming CMMI for failures to produce advertised outcomes, or for costing time and money and adding no value is just another symptom of the problems that existed in such organizations before CMMI was ever introduced.
Blaming CMMI is just the latest cop-out excuse in what’s likely a long list of excuses for the organization’s failures to materialize success –
It’s not CMMI … it’s immature, unreliable, culturally caustic organizations being exposed by the dust the CMMI stirs up.
Next time: How to not be a LCPBC: Making the marriage of CMMI and Agile a no-brainer.
SEPG North America – Day 3
Posted by agilecmmi on Mar 25, 2010 in Configuration Management, Engineering, P-CMM, People CMM, SEPG North America, Testing | 7 comments
The Spectacular Crash and Burn (mine)
My morning talk on Top 10 Clues You’re Probably Not Doing Engineering was a spectacular bust! Oh, but the lessons I learned!
In the immediate after-action analysis I realized what had happened. (Any other excuses I might’ve made at the time to the contrary.) Here’s what actually happened (at least the most likely scenario):
I was tired.
On the evening (read: early morning) when I was working on the final final of the presentation, instead of merging the presentation’s pictures with the slides right there, I chose to procrastinate that task to the next day (or later). Welllllll, being as tired as I was, by the morning I’d forgotten that I had not completed that task.
OK, so that explains why my slides didn’t have their pictures. So, moving on, my next idea was to just present without the pictures. That idea was met by the audience with a resounding moan of disappointment. (I guess a lot of folks were at prior presentations and they liked my pictures.) So, off I navigated to grab the source files from their folder. The folder where all the pictures were supposed to be. And they weren’t there. WTF? How do you/ I explain that!?!
I was tired.
So, back to the night (read: early morning) of the great non-merging event. What must’ve happened (at least the most likely scenario) is that some files were saved to some folder other than the one with all the source materials, and I was completely oblivious to it. How? Of course! I was too tired to notice.
Always quick to find the silver lining, my tremendously inspiring wife, Jeanne, (she’s a veritable silver-lining-finder) pointed out, "You’ve got great material for future presentations! Just talk about how you can’t take care of business if you don’t take care of yourself!"
Dangit!
Caught. Red-handed. Pants down. Wedgie.
The same applies to your team, work group and your company. If you don’t take care of them, they can’t take care of the business. That’s a People CMM presentation if I ever heard one!
The rest of my day was spent licking my wounds.
Thanks to everyone who said nice things about it nonetheless.
SEPG North America – Day 2
Posted by agilecmmi on Mar 24, 2010 in Agile+CMMI, CMMI-SVC, Eileen Forrester, Evidence, Jeff Dalton, Judah Mogilensky, Love and Marriage, Michele Moss, SCAMPI, SEPG Conference, SEPGNA, TDD | Comments Off
Sorry, folks, no fun (or not-so-fun as you may prefer) video today. Not even any pictures I took at SEPG. In fact, as far as today went, I don’t have much to report from the sessions.
Again, I missed the plenary session. This time on account of a phone meeting with a client in another time zone. So, my first session to attend was the other of my two collaborative efforts with Judah Mogilensky on SCAMPI Evidence from Agile Projects. As anything with Judah in it, it went rather nicely. Many generous bits of feedback. I felt really good about my role, and Judah was his usual incomparable self.
My friend and colleague, Eileen Forrester of the SEI was kind enough to give me some supremely powerful feedback. I am, and will be, grateful for it. I was then roped into shop talk about CMMI for Services in advance of the 2nd half of the orientation workshop I’m helping her with. Thus, my missing out on my buddy, Jeff Dalton’s, excellent (so I’m told from many reports) job with Encapsulated Process Objects.
One point made to me later by another of the few “agile-friendly” lead appraisers, Neil Potter, about a bit of content in the presentation does require some follow-up. In the presentation we short-cutted the details on a discussion regarding the potential design aspects of test-driven development with an engineering design. I should say that TDD is NOT the same as a design, but that depending on how TDD is planned and performed, it can include design-like attributes which could accomplish design expectations in the engineering process areas of CMMI-DEV. So don’t anyone out there go around blabbing some “Hillel said TDD is Design!” crap. Mm’K?
After lunch, my job was to keep people from falling asleep with a session on Love and Marriage: CMMI and Agile Need Each Other. From the response, I think it went went rather well. I, personally, was quite pleased with how it came off from a “talk per slide” metric. A good friend, Tami Zemel, later admitted that she “takes back” her earlier criticism of Monday’s presentation. She said it had too many words and didn’t believe me when I told her why. She complemented not only the picture-centricity of today’s pitch but also the delivery, style, and content. That was very generous, thank you.
From then to the end of the day, I spent scheming, strategizing, shmoozing, and networking with too many people to mention. (No offense.) A client who came to the conference (who never holds back and only inflates the truth when it’s funny to do so) got very serious when a prospect I’d recently met off-the-cuff asked whether he’d recommend me. I won’t repeat his answer because it really was just crazy nice. Today’s interesting photo is in his honor. (And also because my boys love transportation.)
The last “session” was a Peer 2 Peer double-header on the topic I mentioned on Monday which I co-created with Michele Moss. She and I are also on the SEPG Conference Program Committee. We used the feedback and other data from the Peer 2 Peer as input to a retrospective on this year’s conference, which will be used for strategies for next year’s conference in Portland, OR.
You can also read an entry I gave to the SEI for their official blog about my impressions of this year’s conference-goers.
Dinner conversation back at the hotel with Michele was back on the subject of our Peer 2 Peer session. Net result: We single-handedly wrote the 1-3-5 year plan for all SEPG’s. Or at least we think so. 
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