- 4.1 What You Will Learn in This Chapter
- 4.2 BOND Case Study Background
- 4.3 What Is a Gap Analysis and Why Is It Crucial for Agile Organizations?
- 4.4 Keys to Conducting a Gap Analysis for an Agile Organization
- 4.5 Example of "Potential Weakness" Against CMMI in an Agile Organization
- 4.6 Running Process Improvement like a Project
- 4.7 TWG Approach for Agile Organizations
- 4.8 Revisiting the Goal and Challenges on the Process Improvement Project
- 4.9 Alternative Practices and Tailored Agile TWG
- 4.10 Returning to the Peer Review Example
- 4.11 Tailored TWG Techniques and Lessons at BOND
- 4.12 Preparation Work for Running Agile TWGs
- 4.13 Packaging of Processes
- 4.14 An Agile Organizational Process Asset Structure
- 4.15 Process Asset Guidelines Used at BOND
- 4.16 Different Organizations with Different Process Asset Structures
- 4.17 Agile TWG Roles and Responsibilities
- 4.18 Effective Techniques to Run an Agile TWG
- 4.19 Separating the TWG Work from the Lead Offline Work
- 4.20 What Do You Do When You Find a Gap?
- 4.21 Answers to Common Questions When Running an Agile TWG
- 4.22 Do I Need a DAR Process?
- 4.23 Do I Need to Verify Everything I Develop?
- 4.24 Do I Need to Make Sure the Steps in My Processes Are in the Right Order?
- 4.25 Do I Need to Make Sure Process Descriptions Are Not Redundant?
- 4.26 Can Requirements Be Captured in an Email or PowerPoint Slides?
- 4.27 Do Requirements Need to Be Captured in Single "Shall Statements"?
- 4.28 Formalizing Informality
- 4.29 Summary
- 4.30 Summary: How Agile Helps CMMI
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
4.19 Separating the TWG Work from the Lead Offline Work
The techniques of running an Agile TWG described in the last section are intended to help keep the group at the desired level of discussion. If the discussion stays too high, the lead should ask more direct questions such as:
- What aids do you use to get your job done such as guides, tools, templates?
The working group members usually do not need to discuss the packaging of the process assets into "must dos" and "guides." This is often more efficiently handled by the TWG lead after the group adjourns. It is important for the lead to take all notes such as drawings or words that were jotted down on a whiteboard. It is also important to capture the terminology used by the group members.
I have seen TWG leads who decided on their own to "translate" the terminology the group members were using in a working session into "CMMI terminology," thinking this was part of their responsibility. This is definitely a mistake and should be guarded against.
The reason for this lesson is really a variant of Lesson 2 in Chapter 2. The CMMI is not a set of dictated practices, and is not intended to dictate terminology. When we say it is a tool to help you reason about your processes, this means to reason about your terminology as well. It is therefore fine to discuss and raise potential issues about the right terminology in your organization. If a term is being used by some inappropriately, this should be discussed. Keep in mind our primary purpose is to "extract" the real process that is used first, and this includes extracting the real terminology used.
In the case when I observed a TWG lead "translating" the terms the group used, it caused a significant buy-in problem during the deployment stage of the project. This occurred because the TWG members felt the lead hadn't listened to them, and members said they didn't even recognize the process that resulted from the TWG effort as being the process they actually used and discussed in the working group. Don't let this happen to your process improvement efforts. TWG leader's responsibilities are primarily facilitation, listening, and documenting.17