@bill_tribble Does it work?

Depends on the team. This probably won't prevent a good team from delivering product. Yet, this probably won't change a bad team to suddenly start performing.

But in all cases, this will allow some software development consultants and trainers to make their boat payments while allowing executives to feel involved with their engineering teams.

@grumble209 @bill_tribble And first of all it's about Teams of Teams working on the same thing.

It doesn't change that much on Team-Level, apart from additional meetings and perhaps 'normalzed' 🤦story points.

I've never seen it work, though.

@bbak @bill_tribble I've been in a couple of different software companies that decided CMMI certification was needed. As far as I can tell, the work we did rolling out the changes didn't make the low-performing teams perform any better; nor did the high-performing teams get any worse (or any better).

I'm left with:
- a shelf of CMMI books,
- the feeling that CMMI is mostly about keeping large companies from being challenged by smaller companies for DoD contracts, while allowing trainers and certifiers to make a living without actually writing code or managing projects,
- and the strong conviction that more time and money should be spent finding, hiring, growing, and keeping good people - strong process won't make up for weak people.

That said, I never read anything in the CMMI books that I objected to. It's all good information that wise developers and PMs should know and apply when needed.

@bill_tribble @bbak Can teams get better? Absolutely! The first steps are deciding they want to get better and be open and willing to change.

Once you have that mindset, all manner of frameworks can be usefully applied to make changes. Pick one, mix and match, or roll your own!

But until the team have that mindset, no amount of imposition of frameworks by management is going to meaningfully change things. And if the problem is management, you're already screwed - clean up your resume and find someplace else.

@grumble209 @bill_tribble I get your point and largely agree.

Except for that mix&match, best-of-breed, roll-your-own approach.
Frameworks (mostly) have what I call conceptual integrity (stole that term from Fred Brooks). And one needs some amount of knowledge, experience and understanding (=mental models to make sense of observations) to create something that has it.