Agile maturity model: Oxymoron or the next level of understanding

Abstract

From the agile camp you can hear someone to say that CMMI is the big American waterfall model monster, and is outright contra productive to agile methods. From the CMMI camp you can hear someone to say that agile methods is hackers from hell that uses the agile paradigm to enjoy anarchy with no rules. You can also hear some say that agile works the best in CMMI level 5 companies. The context of the dilemma however is slightly awkward. CMMI describes characteristics of good development practices, and agile is a lifecycle concept. So from a meta point of view they can easily co-exist. We would like to state that they do, and that you need both to support the best development performance. Starting in December 2011 three surveys were launched to get an idea about what could an agile maturity model deliver and what might be its added value. 67 Participants from several agile or/and CMMI® related LinkedIn Groups contributed to the survey. This article explains the survey results and proposes further research topics and harmonization actions. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.