Friday, October 17, 2008

Focus on Organizational Maturity (Not Appraisals)

I’ve been greatly encouraged by the feedback from my Agile 2008 Main Stage presentation. It was so fortunate that InfoQ chose to video it and make it available to a wider audience. I came across this reall detailed summary by Reinout van Rees.

However, there is a brief mention of something I’ve heard elsewhere. My assetion that a high level of organizational maturity is required to achieve institutionalized enterprise scale agile adoption, is being misinterpretted as me saying teams must seek an CMMI appraisal in order to deliver on their goal of enterprise agility.

from Reinout… In David’s opinion, kanban is the method that can help us achieve both agility and high maturity. It will push us forwards. It creates a cultural shift. A shift that allows some teams to reach cmmi level 4 certification.

I am not saying that appraisal is necessary. What I am saying, is that the CMMI is an existing model for organizational maturity. It is a model with 20 years of learning and iteration built in to it. The people in charge of it are still learning and still iterating. My observation of real teams adopting agile is that they appear to more or less follow the CMMI’s model of organizational maturity. In other words, level 2 practices appear first, then level 3 and so on. My conclusion from this observation is that the CMMI model for organizational maturity is more or less correct. Close enough to be good enough.

What I’ve observed with teams pursuing a kanban approach is that it creates a culture suitable for the CMMI generic practices that lead to high maturity. In addition, kanban appears to create an appropriate framework for the practices in levels 2 and 3 of the CMMI model to emerge naturally/organically/spontaneously without the need for a CMMI process initiative. This is a significant win because a common anti-pattern with CMMI is “management by objectives” where the objective is to get an appraisal at a specific level.

Hence, what I am saying is, if we know that a high level of organizational maturity is a key indicator of success with enterprise scale adoption, then it makes sense to pursue organizational maturity as a driver to success. If pursuing organizational maturity is goal then we need not re-invent the wheel. We can follow the model that the Software Engineering Institute has provided us. Getting a CMMI appraisal is not part of the message at all. An appraisal might make sense if you are in a regulated industry, have a business driver for an appraisal such as competing for government contracts. However, appraisal does not enter my message concerning success with enterrpise scale adoption. The message is…

A high level of organizational maturity appears to be essential to successful enterprise scale adoption. There is an existing model for organizational maturity that appears to be broadly correct. That model is CMMI. Technorati tag: David+Anderson agile, CMMI, SEI, Software+Engineering, Management

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Changes #2: David J Anderson & Associates

Today, I packed up my desk and books and moved out of the Modus Cooperandi office on Lake Union in Seattle. Going forward, my new business entity is David J. Anderson & Associates, Inc..

This change may seem a little strange to many as the Modus Cooperandi name is largely associated with me. The reality is that the name was first registered by my business partner Jim Benson. We started Modus Cooperandi with the intent to build a software company focused on social media for the enterprise. The management consulting practice was intended to help fund and bootstrap that software business.

With the current economic climate, I decided to focus on management consulting and minimize the overheads the business was incurring. Meanwhile, Jim has a passion for social media and for food and eating out. He has been building a pratice to offer consulting services to restauranteurs and publicans. As this is really his personal hedgehog concept, I feel he should pursue that. He wanted to keep the Modus Cooperandi name as he originally thought of it and registered it. While changing my business name and entity is very inconvenient, I feel it was the right thing to do. So Jim continues with Modus Cooperandi. And I start again with a new business entity.

From a the perspective of prospective clients, nothing has changed other than the name to use on the contract. Existing contracts with clients written under the Modus Cooperandi name will be fulfilled. It is likely that most of the existing associates will follow me to the new business - Daniel Vacanti, Corey Ladas, Oksana Schubert and Eric Willeke have confirmed that they’d like to be involved.

Changes #1: Valtech Deal Ends

The partnership deal between Modus Cooperandi Inc., and Valtech Inc., came to an end at the beginning of October. As a result I am no longer the Chief Process Scientist with Valtech. I don’t want to disclose too many details publicly but it seems Valtech significantly restructured their business in the United States, reducing the work force and cutting costs. The partnership with Modus Cooperandi appears to have ended as part of that restructuring.

For those attending the Agile Edge event in London, my participation at Lords is unaffected. So I will be delivering the key note speech on 28th October. See you there! Technorati tag: Modus+Cooperandi, David+Anderson, Valtech

Monday, October 06, 2008

Follow me on Twitter

I’m late to the Twitter party - embarrassing for a guy with a business that claims (at least in part) to be consulting in the social media space. So if you tweet, you can now follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/agilemanager. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile, Management