David Anderson describes how the Declaration of Interdependence and the Capability Maturity Model Integrated are related on his post.
The DoI is a set of principles for managing agile projects. The CMMI with its various models is a framework for assessing the maturity of a product or software development organization.
They are orthogonal to each other in useful ways.
- DoI describes a broad set of behavioral principles that can be used to perform work. But DoI does not actually describe the practices to be used when performing this work.
- CMMI describes a collection of processes by which an organization's processes can be apprised to determine their level of maturity.
The DoI does not state "what" processes should be performed. The CMMI does not state "how" the processes are to be performed, but looks at the evidence of the process to determine how it conforms to the CMMI framework.
At the end of the post David, asserts that
"it is perfectly possible to be an agile project manager and be running a CMMI compliant process."
David may mean software development in place of project management, since he is flogging the latest Microsoft .NET development environment for CMMI. That aside, the assertion actually requires a few more steps before it can be tested.
- The actual processes used while "being an agile project manager" need to be defined. These processes can no doubt be derived from the 6 principles of the DoI. To date, I've not seen any "official" list of processes that match up with the DoI. But like the Agile Manifesto they will emerge as the concepts mature.
- Once these processes are in place, operational, and the processes produce artifacts from the application; they can be appraised by a properly trained and certified CMMI appraiser.
At that point the assertion David makes at the bottom of the post can be tested to determine if it is actually true.
