We use Scrum and other agile methods to deploy complex software frequently and incrementally in order to get frequent feedback on the implemented features of the product.

Exactly the same applies to implementing process changes. We want to avoid big-bang installations within software development as well as within process changes, and we most certainly want to get frequent feedback on our process improvements.

Then why not use Scrum to implement Scrum within an organisation?

You might want to start in a small scale with one chosen project, and then scale up to include more projects step by step. A product owner and a scrum master is appointed, which may vary from organisation to organisation. Also a backlog should be established early on.

With the roles distributed and a backlog established the rest of the process can be implemented piece by piece and added to the backlog: people should be educated and coached, which project to go next, retrospectives must start up, timeboxing should be adopted if not in place already, performance measurements should be started, teams should be formed, other agile practices like continuous integration could be evaluated and adopted etc.

All this cannot be done in one big step and should not be done without the help of experienced scrum/agile coaches. Even on project level scrum should be adopted incrementally and process improvements should continuously be added to the product backlog of the project and being evaluated in the retrospectives.

Implementing Scrum is about changing the mind-set of people, and that is not done in a twinkling.

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I am not an eager supporter of CMM/CMMI, since I believe that they were initially created for waterfall methods with big plans upfront and not being very lean. However CMMI Level 5 is somewhat interesting from an agile point of view: (Level 5 - Certaintity. Continuous process improvement via metrics feedback).

Jeff Sutherland and co-authors are writing a paper on the subject and find that Scrum could provide CMMI Level 5 with unique benefits as well as the cost of going to Level 5 is dramatically reduced if starting with Scrum. Some process experts even claim that a good implementation of Scrum throughout the organisation automatically gets you to CMMI level 3.

However the question still lingers “What benefits does CMMI provide?“. The cost of implementing CMMI Level 5 is still high and I doubt most companies will ever justify the return on investment for doing it.

Read Jeff’s interesting articles on the subject:
Scrum Supports CMMI Level 5 - Intro and abstract of the paper
Is CMMI worth doing - A following discussion on the subject by Jeff Sutherland
Agile CMMI Open Space - Another interesting discussion around CMMI and Agile.

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I just came back from a guest lecture that I gave in connection to ARKAD, which is (swe. “arbetsmarknandsdagarna”) at LTH in Lund. The title of the speech was

“A 942 Iteration Scrum Project - a lesson in self coaching and agile software project management”

A subject that I have mentioned on the blog before. The idea is to explain scrum by applying it to my family life and by doing so getting an effect of self coaching.

The backlog is my to-do list. The iteration and timebox is my wall calendar. The team is my family. And in these disussion weave in theoretical elements about team size, iteration length, timeboxing, etc. You get some nice effects by doing so and the feedback I got from the listeners was good.

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