What is the Difference between CMMI and Agile?
Is there anyone who can tell me what is the difference between CMMI and Agile. I know some obvious difference, but I want to know it further. I will appreciate it a lot if someone can help me! Thanks!
Answer
CMMI is a process improvement methodology which aims to take projects or teams from level 1, "chaotic", to a higher level, ideally but not necessarily level 5, "optimising".
It consists of various capabilities, each of which is assigned to a specific level. For example, CMM level 2 requires the Project Planning capability. The levels are basically:
- Chaotic, no real control.
- Managed, processes at project level, mostly reactive.
- Defined, processes at organisation level, proactive.
- Quantitative, processes measured and controlled.
- Optimising, feedback loops and continuously improving.
In my opinion, high levels of CMMI maturity are rather complex and difficult to achieve. While working for a large company doing outsourcing for a major Telco, we achieved level 5 but it was a great deal of work for continuously diminishing returns. We ended up viewing it as mostly a way to get government work and, in fact, I made a name for myself as a small projects specialist where we could still follow CMMI but not have to charge megabucks to the customer.
Agile, on the other hand, is a project management methodology focusing more on delivering what customers need rather than copious amounts of paperwork :-)
I see CMMI as one level up from Agile in that Agile itself is not a massively self-improving process.
It has improvement processes built in (such as retrospectives) but not in such a manner that the whole methodology may be turfed out if it's not performing.
In higher CMMI levels, whole chunks of project management methods (including Agile for example) can be tossed out or bought in depending on their performance and/or likely efficiencies.