Agility Model vs Maturity Model
ZapThink’s Ron Schmeltzer makes good points in his essay, “Forget Maturity Models — It’s Time for an Agility Model,” published today. But not all of his points are on target.
“Too often, companies flock to maturity models, such as the widely-famous (and too-often mimicked) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), without adequately understanding what they are meant to measure,” he writes. That’s totally true.
However, he goes on to say, “For many companies, achieving a certain level of maturity has primarily a marketing-only value for the end-users. Other maturity models are positioned primarily to sell vendors’ products.” I’m not sure that I agree with that. CMMI isn’t Six Sigma, after all.
Most of the people that I’ve talked about about maturity models are definitely looking to compare their development efforts against industry norms, with a genuine goal of identifying weaknesses and improving processes. They want the truth, good, bad or ugly — not just a happy number that they can promote.
I do agree with Ron, though, that agility doesn’t lend itself to classic maturity model metrics. “Measuring agility on a scale of 1 to 5 (as almost all maturity models do), is a pointless exercise.” True. But then he adds, “simply put, not all Service-oriented projects need to have the same level of agility as others,” he says. That’s where he goes off the beam.
The CMM (or any software maturity model, like my own Threading Maturity Model) isn’t designed to compare one
Given that misstep, Ron’s essay is worth reading. He proposes a broader metric, with seven variables, that can be used to measure the appropriate agility of a specific project or initiative. Great. However, his ZapThink Agility Model doesn’t replace a SOA Maturity Model for an organization, not at all.