Recently, some people asked me if I used an agile maturity model.

I guess this should not come as a surprise because agile has gone mainstream.  Organisations are now struggling with how to create a consistent and effective approach to implementing agile practices.

A maturity model is a good way of assessing whether a team is using bad practices, good practices or excellent practices.  It moves from “adhoc” to “do it OK” to “repeatable and reliable”  and finally to “awesome and continually improving.”

I am not against doing this, but I do see an issue with two statements being made at the same time:

• We see agile as a mindset; and
• We are building a maturity model to ensure everyone adopts exactly the same agile practices in the same way without variation

I guess my problem is that I don’t think the agile mindset is to be consistent and compliant.

To me adopting an agile mindset and related practices means being  curious and evolving continuously.

This implies that existing good practices will become outdated while new and useful approaches will appear as the context of the team changes.  I don’t actually think that “best practice” agile exists, rather we have “the best we know of, here and now, in our current circumstances.”

So here is the maturity module that I provided to the team I was talking to.  I said I would publish it and here it is – official and fully endorsed.

Continue reading “My (dodgy) agile maturity model”