Lean CMMI - My Presentation at Agile2015!

First and foremost, I'm so grateful and thankful to Allah (swt) for helping me getting through this research paper. Not only that, I got it accepted in the Agile Conference 2015; the biggest Agile conference in the world.

I have published several papers before, but they were all industrial reports. Industrial reports (aka experience reports) document useful experiments done in the industry. As opposed to research papers, industrial reports do not necessarily use a scientific method to prove something.

My personal opinion, Industrial Reports are very useful, and probably more valuable than research paper. They reflect real experience and one can draw benefit from it right away. So, if your audience are software practitioners, then research papers are not the right means to communicate your experience to them :)

If this is the case, why did I write a paper? Two reasons:

1. The first reason is that I had data! and found it interesting to experiment writing a paper.
2. The second reason is to write a proof that incremental approaches in process improvement is better that holistic approaches. 

Here is a link to the abstract of the paper: Lean CMMI: An Iterative and Incremental Approach to CMMI-Based Process Improvement.

In this paper, I'm comparing results of process improvement in Configuration Management process area of CMMI. The first group of results are based on traditional process improvement effort (one process area at a time). The second group of results are based on the 'Process Increments' method, an iterative and incremental approach for software process improvement. This model divides improvements into small chunks as in the following model:

These Process Increments are dynamic. You can add, remove, re-prioritize them as needed. It's like user stories in software projects.

The results of the study are in the following diagram. It's a box plot of SP ratings in semi-formal CMMI appraisals. As you see, the ratings in the second group of companies are much higher than ratings in the first group of companies. is as follows:

Those who knows six sigma or has experience in research would know that these results are real proof that iterative and incremental methods works better!

Why change? Is your team aware of the value?

As change agents, we introduce changes in organizations we work for. Sometimes, these changes are integrated smoothly into the way the team works. In other cases, we find a lot of friction and resistance.

One of the things which facilitates change and alleviates friction is explaining the value of change for your team. Although this seems straight forward, but we usually do not exert enough effort to do that!

In one case, I didn't need to explain the value of change, although the change looked so naive and has no value. See what happened when I asked a crowd of 220 audience to change places, and they just did it with no single objection!!

This was part of my keynote last August at AgileAfrica 2013. I understand why would someone just follow a keynote speaker telling him to do something even he/she didn't know its value. If I were sitting at their place I would most probably think that there is value, and I would rather wait till I see it later on. 

I have done this experiment with smaller groups. The result was completely the opposite. They challenged this request (to change places). They felt skeptical about the value of this change. It was necessary to convince then with the value of change before they do it. 

Take care when you are leading change in organizations: In order to take the organization one step forward, you would better explain the value of change for the whole organization, or at least for the whole stakeholders who are affected by this change.