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Our CMMI and agile eBooks are the fastest way to get up to speed on the basics of CMMI, agile, and software process improvement. Download one or our free eBooks, or purchase one of our latest books on Amazon.
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The Guide to Scrum and CMMI. Authored by Jeff Dalton and published by The CMMI Institute, “A Guide to Scrum and CMMI: Improving Agile Performance with CMMI” serves as a roadmap to successfully adopt and implement CMMI and agile together. The CMMI provides a framework or map of “what” a high-performance organization must do. Agile provides particular approaches that prescribe “how” to do it. Use the guide to understand how to adopt CMMI in an agile environment, how to use CMMI to scale and improve agile performance across the enterprise, and how to conduct CMMI appraisals in an agile organization that uses Scrum.
An Agile Success Story. “An Agile Success Story” describes the challenges that the State of Michigan’s Department of Technology, Management, and Budget (DTMB) was experiencing difficulty delivering projects that were considered successful by their agency business customers. To address these challenges, Broadsword assisted the DTMB with their program to offer hands-on, learner-centered training that acclimated their Agile teams to an integrated “Scrum + SUITE” approach, as well as prepared practitioners to sit for the Professional Scrum Master certification exam. In one- and two-day onsite classes, State of Michigan IT professionals that attended the “Scrum + SUITE Learning Experience” training learned to make the transition to Scrum, and also how to integrate Scrum and SUITE into their project environments.
CMMI User Stories. “CMMI® User Stories: A study of perception in the market” explores the experience that engineering and software professionals are having with the CMMI Model. Commissioned by Broadsword Solutions Corporation, the study seeks to understand the perception of the CMMI through direct conversations with CMMI users – adopters, stakeholders, sponsors, shareholders, and customers – and to report on the findings. Approximately 50 CMMI Users shared their experience with the CMMI, and the benefits their company had received as a result of implementing the model and having an appraisal. These are their stories
CMMI for Executives. Full of humor, strategies, tips and techniques, “CMMI for Executives: The 12 Days of CMMI” takes you inside our holiday party for all the fun and learning about CMMI that you can handle. You’ll learn new information on interpreting the CMMI as a set of guidelines that can help transform the culture of your company, changing the way your company behaves and putting you on the path to greatness. The book provides a wealth of insight about the CMMI’s “Generic Practices” (GP’s) – the most important part of the CMMI model – so you become a great organization by adopting one Generic Practice (GP) per day.
CMMI vs SCRUM? No — CMMI + Scrum! In this article written for the Cutter IT Journal, Jeff Dalton walks us through a thorough application of using CMMI to make Scrum stronger and more scalable. He further demonstrates an approach to CMMI that is not only compatible with Scrum, but also uses Scrum and agile thinking to facilitate CMMI! It’s not merely a matter of such-and-so Scrum practices demonstrating this-or-that CMMI practice — that would be both easy and disingenuous. Dalton practices what he preaches and would never lead a company down a path that only solves their performance needs once, leaving them with nothing with which to fend for themselves when circumstances change. Instead, he offers us a simple and robust architecture that we can use to build processes incrementally and iteratively. How agile!
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Just the FAQs, Second Edition. In this 2nd Edition of their popular “Just the FAQs” eBook, Jeff Dalton and Pat O’Toole, are back at it, penning a series of short stories from different perspectives about process improvement, CMMI, and Agile development, that address common misconceptions, myths, and fundamental misunderstandings that persist with the software and engineering professions. Their mission? To provide answers to the most frequently asked questions about the CMMI, SCAMPI, engineering strategy and software process improvement.- What you’ll find in the book:
- How do the generic practices make us better?
- What is training capability?
- How do we develop good PPQA habits?
- How can we REALLY know how things are going?
Secrets of SCAMPI. “The Secrets of SCAMPI” is a practical guide that takes engineering and software professionals inside the changing SCAMPI Appraisal. You will be introduced to the new concepts in the latest release of SCAMPI. You will see how they impact the way CMMI Appraisals are conducted. With this guide, you will come to understand how your Lead Appraisers and Appraisal Teams will be evaluating your organization. “The Secrets of SCAMPI” demystifies the process, and lets you in on the secrets of having a successful Appraisal. Spoiler alert – the first secret might shock you: This is supposed to be fun!
How to Spell CMMI. “How to Spell CMMI” is an introduction to the popular performance improvement model known as the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). In this book, executives, engineers, and business professionals learn how to think about applying the CMMI to solve their most pressing business challenges. Improving software delivery, achieving a CMMI “certificate” or rating, developing a strategic weapon to help attract and retain new customers, or getting on the path to becoming a great company – whatever your goals, you’ll find refreshing strategies, insights and humor in, “How to Spell CMMI, An Introduction to the Organizational Performance Improvement Model Everyone’s Buzzing About!”
Accelerating Performance with Change Management Practices. “Accelerating Performance with Change Management Practices” is an introduction to Organizational Change Management (OCM, or simply “Change Management”), a discipline that provides a structured approach that an organization uses to transition from wherever they are today to wherever they want to be tomorrow. In this book, executives, engineers, and business professionals can learn how to use Change Management practices to navigate successfully through the enormous transformation they are facing, and to speed the organization to its future state. Whether your large scale transformation requires that the company change people’s roles, jobs or structure – or all three – you’ll find refreshing strategies, tactics, templates and tools for making the shift in, “Accelerating Performance with Change Management Practices: How to Speed Your Organization to Its Future State.”
The Power of Pilot Testing: Validating Processes that Are Strengthened by the CMMI. Process improvement planning is the focus of “The Power of Pilot Testing: Validating Processes that Are Strengthened by the CMMI.” This eBook is a guide for organizations seeking to uncover and correct errors in processes that are strengthened by the CMMI, before rolling them out to the whole company, and without adding significant overhead. “The Power of Pilot Testing” was developed from some of the highest traffic posts of the popular blog, Ask the CMMI Appraiser, run by CMMI Appraiser Jeff Dalton, President of Broadsword Solutions, and Laura Adkins, Senior CMMI Consultant. They share their experiences leading organizations in supercharging engineering performance, increasing productivity and reducing risk, based on Broadsword’s structured agileCMMI approach.
