The SEI has released a Technical Note that I co-authored with Mike Konrad, Hillel Glazer, Jeff Dalton, and Sandy Shrum. This paper was written almost a year ago and went through a lot of revision and review. We published a public draft at the SEPG conference in March 2008 and held a panel session with all the authors to discuss the content. The paper is finally complete and published. It's a 48 page document. This is no lightweight look at Agile and CMMI. It's a very in-depth analysis that looks at why people perceived incompatibilities and why the two communities were not mixing or understanding each other's point of view. I suspect it will be for some time to come, the definitive statement on Agile + CMMI.

Here are the official announcements...

Announcement 1

Think that Agile and CMMI are incompatible? You may be wrong according to the authors of a newly released report published by the Software Engineering Institute. The report CMMI and Agile: Why Not Embrace Both! explains why each of these two improvement approaches have been misunderstood by users of the other approach and describes how CMMI and Agile can be used together in ways that benefit from the advantages of both. Take a look at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/08.reports/08tn003.html for a copy of the report.

 

Announcement 2

CMMI® and Agile: Why Not Embrace Both!

Agile development methods and CMMI (Capability Maturity Model® Integration) best practices are often perceived to be at odds with each other. This report clarifies why the discord need not exist and proposes that CMMI and Agile champions work toward deriving benefit from using both and exploit synergies that have the potential to dramatically improve business performance. Get a copy of this groundbreaking report at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/08.reports/08tn003.html.

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