RallyDev.com
This post continues on our series of questions and answers from the webinar Dave West from Forrester and I did on Scaling Agility with Lean: Proven Methods of Operational 
Efficiency.
At Rally, we often get questions about how Agile fits in with a variety of other practices and processes, so the below questions about Agile and CMMI, Agile and RUP, and Agile and Architecture come as no surprise. Stay tuned for the final Q&A on Agile champions.
DW – is Dave West from Forrester
RAM – is Ryan Martens from Rally
How can Agile be integrated in a CMMI certified application in regards to the tremendous amounts of required CMMI artifacts (documentation)?
DW – The flippant answer is it can’t. ☺ But actually I have seen some great systems integrators use CMMI to help check list their processes of which some of those processes are Agile. Agile development works really well at the team level, but it needs to be surrounded with other processes. CMMI makes sure you remember those processes, some of which are inside the Agile team, others are not. The PA’s always seem to imply lots of documentation, but they do not have. You can keep the documentation to a minimum, but still deliver them. Do not, however, burden the Agile team with proving their compliance – Use the checklist, build the software and get others to prove they did what they said they did.
RAM – I am not quite as negative as Dave on this topic. CMMI and Agile combine just fine. There are a number of proof points that are easily found from past Agile conferences and by searching “Agile and CMMI.” The problem is that many folk misinterpret CMMI and are convinced that it mandates waterfall, heavy process and heavy documentation. According to SEI, it does not. Most teams would not adopt CMMI without a specific business need.
