¿Merece la pena aplicar CMMI?

Systematic Software Engineering considera que CMMI tiene grandes ventajas y no prescindiría de él.1. Estratégicamente quieren conseguir grandes contratos en EE.UU. y Escandinavia que requieran CMMI Nivel 5.

2. Ofrece una gran previsibilidad. Las fechas de finalización de los contratos superan los 95%.

3. Proporciona un producto mejor diseñado en cuanto a escalabilidad, mantenibilidad, adaptabilidad, etc.

4. Elimina 80% de retrabajo (que incluye errores). Scrum reduce a la mitad el trabajo restante, por lo que ha eliminado 90% de trabajo. La media de Scrum sólo elimina 40% de retrabajo sin CMMI.

Systematic preferiría CMMI a Scrum. Sin embargo, encuentran Scrum para proporcionar beneficios sorprendentes a CMMI Nivel 5. Creo que el coste de ir a CMMI Nivel 5 a partir de Scrum podría reducirse en 50-80%. Esto permitiría a más empresas alcanzar los beneficios. Creemos que todo el mundo puede ofrecer productos de mejor ingeniería con una calidad mucho mayor y una gran previsibilidad de fechas. La sobrecarga de proceso del nivel 5 de CMMI con Scrum es de 4%. La mayoría de los Scrum tienen muchos más residuos que 4%.

Of the Scrum's I have seen, early implementations typically average about 50% waste, the CMMI Level 1 number. However, even a bad Scrum improves productivity so total waste is less than Scrum. Yet most companies can't show metrics that demonstrate they more than doubled productivity. This is so easy to do with Scrum I'm starting to think that we should say that a company hasn't implemented Scrum yet if they cannot show real metrics that demonstrate they have doubled velocity using their burndown charts. Failure to do this means they have not been tracking their burndown so they haven't implemented Scrum. Or it means their implementation is so riddled with impediments that they have been unable to implement Scrum effectively.

A lot of companies are going through the motions while disfunctional management is so bad they can't really implement Scrum. CMMI Level 5 will require managers to remove impediments or lose CMMI Level 5 certification. We have agreed on this with the CMMI Level 5 auditor, who says the management role must be clear and must be enforced. High maturity means that management aggressively eliminates impediments surfaced by the teams. They should start doing this now even if they are going to remain at CMMI Level 1 (where most companies are). Failure to do this means management sucks.

In some companies I work with, particularly the multi-billion dollar companies, the cost of developing software is so small compared to the rest of the company budget, that they do not have the incentive to remove software impediments because it requires change, and change is hard. They have bigger problems in other parts of the company. This just means the management is doing a worse job elsewhere than they are doing in software development. At least, they should insist that the software development managers clean up their act, even if they can't provide them with much higher level management attention. Scrum metrics and Scrum transparency of data will help them clean up what is essentially a middle-management problem with very little effort.

They should then ask development managers why they can't operate at CMMI Level 5 when the process overhead is 4% or less with Scrum. Management wants firm dates they can count on. They want higher quality and more scalable and adaptable implementations. Good CMMI implementation can provide this. The only thing preventing progress is the cost of change. That cost should be carefully analyzed. A roadmap should be build for process change and resource requirements should be mapped out with a timeline. Once this is done, a clear business decision can be made and execution of a rational plan becomes much easier and more effective.

La conclusión es que la mayoría de las empresas nunca encontrarán un ROI que justifique pasar al nivel 5 de CMMI con una metodología en cascada. El coste es demasiado elevado y los beneficios demasiado remotos. Con Scrum, el coste se reduce drásticamente, y la velocidad de implantación podría acelerarse radicalmente. De repente, el retorno de la inversión podría parecer bastante bueno para muchas empresas.

In the final analysis, some process experts say that a well implemented Scrum across a company cannot be done without being at CMMI Level 3. Essentially you get that for free by implementing Scrum well. Going to Level 5 won't cost you much more with Scrum.