Scope of assessment

[urutherford]

Certification implies an individual. As agile often depends upon team
practices, I think it reasonable to be able to assess a team for
knowledge, experience and good practice.

But I wonder if we can consider the possibility of assessing agility
in broader scenarios.

Might it be feasible to assess agility across a multi-team software
development department? In software systems delivery? In support? In
network services? In a whole IT department?

Can agile practices benefit any project-based endeavour? Are they of
use in ongoing, repetitive or reactive environments? Could a whole
enterprise be assessed for its application of agile thinking?

Ursula

[scott.duncan]

Just a point on individual vs company certification.

As currently used in many software-related certifications
certifications are focused on
individuals. But certification is used for organizations.

An example is the field of auditing. There are auditing firms who
come into a company
and audit against some given standard then "register" (some will call
it certify) that
company. This means the audit firm says the company has met the
requirements
of the standard. However, audit firms themselves are audited by
organizations, often
run by or formally recognized as authorities by governments. The
audit firms are certified
by these higher organizations who are saying the audit firms follow
accepted standards
and practices for (external) auditing.

Getting back to company, rather than individual, assessment, there are
a number of
people who have proposals, programs, assessment tools, etc. in this
regard. Some
have come initially from academic sources while others from corporate
efforts and
yet others by individual consultants. So it is not just a
possibility, has been and
is being done, but from so many sources that there is no main focus
for doing it.

On Sep 21, 12:07 am, urutherford <ursulat...@saxonsoftware.co.uk>
wrote:

[urutherford]

Thanks, Scott, for your thoughts on assessment of companies.

You're right about inspections and audits for certification. I've had
experience of assessment (both internal and external) for ISO9001,
European quality awards, Sarbanes-Oxley, financial audit, security of
information, Investors in People, health and safety, environmental
impact, community relations, equality, customer satisfaction, employee
satisfaction...

I see what you mean about auditors granting or withholding
certification according to assessment to a predetermined standard. But
not all assessment is so cut and dried. Adoption of ISO9001, in
particular, involves first formally determining which procedures are
essential to the correct operation of the company and then documenting
exactly how they will be practiced. Audit involves employees
demonstrating knowledge of these approved practices and, of course,
enabling inspection for complete adherence to them both in action and
retrospectively.

It is this inspection of first the intent and then the realisation of
that intent which suggests to me a possible way of assessing agility.
But do you think assessment for agility is feasible at company level?
Is it meaningful? Is it even desirable?

What might be the motivation for a company to self-assess? What could
be the rationale/justification for a company to undergo inspection for
agility?

I wonder how the assessment criteria and methods for assessing a
company would differ from assessment of an individual? I've suggested
the main aspects of assessment of an individual agile practitioner
could be knowledge, experience and practice; I imagine assessment of a
team (or any larger group) would need to include communications and
interaction.

Ursula

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[D. André Dhondt]

>What might be the motivation for a company to self-assess?

I think that the Toyota Production System demonstrates that a sustained process-improvement strategy is the key to helping a company survive in good and bad economic times.  So, for me, self-assessment at a corporate or individual level is: insurance, waste reduction, and ultimately, profit.

Keep in mind, though, that it's sustained "inspect and adapt" as they say in Scrum, or PDCA (plan, do, check, act) for lean, or "red-green-refactor" as they say in XP.  We can't expect someone who got certified 15 years ago and then never learned anything more to be a star performer--we're looking for people that are constantly working to improve, to "think out of the box", who work smarter, not harder.



--
D. André Dhondt
http://dhondtsayitsagile.blogspot.com/

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[scott.duncan]

If you are interested in what criteria might be used to assess an
organization's agility, you might want to look at the existing/
proposed
assessmentefforts that I mentioned are already in existence or being
developed. Sidky, Cohn, Krishnamurthy, IBM, etc. have some to
just mention a few. Try an internet search on these names plus the
terms "agile" and "assessment" as well as just the terms without any
specific names. You can track down quite a few examples of people
already doing this or working on it.

On Sep 21, 8:49 pm, urutherford <ursulat...@saxonsoftware.co.uk>
wrote:

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