I’m processing my feeds and posts that I had flagged for follow-up and came across this little gem on the Agile Management blog that is maintained by the MSF team at Microsoft.
The team is trying to answer what will become a common question for Team System users which is what process template (and therefore process) are you going to follow for your project. The thing that stuck in my mind was this:
“MSF for CMMI Process Improvement relies on process and conformance to process rather than relying purely on trust and the ability of the individual team members.”
I guess my criticism would be that any time you start trying to compensate for individuals by introducing process, you effectively have to slow everything down to cope first with the reduced capacity for delivery but also to cope with the additional process overhead.
In nature an ecosystem works with each participant adhering to a set of rules, there is no autocratic process governing everything. Those who don’t follow the set of rules don’t eat and die. Its kind of spartan but this system has worked for squillions of years.
MSF Agile 4.0 and other agile methodologies essentially set the simple rules that a development team needs to survive – nothing is perfect but eventually the system will roll into a position of balance by showing up those who aren’t carrying their weight.