Integrating CMMI and Agile Development

"This book will be a great help to a variety of organizations figuring out how best to implement CMMI, including large and small enterprises, even if their starting point is not 'Agile.' All-in-all, this contains 'pearls of wisdom' that will make a much-appreciated contribution to the software engineering community."
Mike Konrad
Chief Architect, CMMI, Software Engineering Institute
Coauthor, CMMI®: Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement, Second Edition

"This book will challenge many of your (mis)understandings about both agile delivery and CMMI. Paul thoughtfully applies his years of practical experience to help bridge two disparate communities who are working towards the same goal–improving an organization’s IT productivity.  It’s about time someone wrote a book like this."
Scott W. Ambler
Chief Methodologist for Agile and Lean, IBM Rational
Author, Agile Modeling, and coauthor, Enterprise Unified Process

Many organizations that have improved process maturity through Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI®) now also want greater agility. Conversely, many organizations that are succeeding with Agile methods now want the benefits of more mature processes. The solution is to integrate CMMI and Agile. This book offers a start-to-finish blueprint for melding these process improvement methodologies. It presents six detailed case studies, along with essential real-world lessons, big-picture insights, and mistakes to avoid. 

Drawing on decades of process improvement experience, author Paul McMahon explains how combining an Agile approach with the CMMI process improvement framework is the fastest, most effective way to achieve your business objectives. He offers practical, proven techniques for CMMI and Agile integration, including new ways to extend Agile into system engineering and project management and optimizing performance by focusing on your organization’s unique, culture-related weaknesses.

Integrating CMMI® and Agile Development is divided into five parts.

• Part One begins with concise primers and refreshers on both CMMI and Agile, explaining why they are far more compatible than many practitioners realize.
• Part Two introduces specific, proven techniques to help CMMI “process-mature” organizations increase their agility.
• Part Three demonstrates how successful Agile organizations can increase their CMMI process maturity without compromising the agility that has brought them success.
• Part Four shows how the CMMI can help organizations that are attempting to be agile, but are missing key ingredients of true agility.
• Part Five introduces exclusive CMMI/Agile-based techniques for achieving substantial performance gains by focusing on the “personal” side of process improvement.

Virtual Project Management

Virtual Project Management: Software Solutions for Today and the Future explores the technical management issues involved in the revolutionary new way of building complex software intensive systems faster and cheaper by employing the power of distributed operations. The book examines the implementation issues that cut deep inside present day collocated engineering organizations and recommends practical and affordable actions to aid organizations seeking increased productivity through distributed operations.The demand for integrated solutions constructed from a combination of existing and newly developed software increases daily. Many organizations find themselves with shortages of the critical skills necessary to compete in many of these newly created markets. Employing virtual collaborative development provides a dramatic increase in a company's opportunities to successfully compete. Virtual collaboration provides a broader skill and product knowledge base coupled with a deeper pool of personnel to potentially employ. It removes two of the major barriers - company affiliation and physical location. Virtual Project Management: Software Solutions for Today and the Future focuses on critical characteristics underlying how work actually gets done in traditional collocated engineering environments. It examines the changes taking place on virtual projects through a series of anecdotes based on real project experiences. The book provides an 8 step practical and affordable plan that can be used as a framework in either setting up and executing a new virtual project, or in instituting improvements to a project that has drifted off course. Others have lived through the pain of learning lessons the hard way. You don't need to follow their path. The insights and solutions offered by Paul McMahon answer the questions virtual project leaders will be asking well into the 21st century.

Contact pemcmahon@acm.org for the best price on this book.