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GovCon Expert Ron Lear: How to Strengthen Agile Development With CMMI

By Ron Lear, Vice President of Models and Frameworks at ISACA

As organizations face growing demands for speed, quality and adaptability, traditional performance improvement methods and Agile development practices alone often fall short. While Agile methodologies emphasize adaptability and rapid iteration, they can lack the structured guidance needed for consistency, quality and scalability across complex, high-stakes environments. 

With intensifying competition, digital transformation and the rise of development methodologies like Agile and DevSecOps, businesses need frameworks that support not only adaptability but also discipline, consistency and long-term performance gains.

How ISACA Can Help

ISACA’s CMMI V3.0 addresses these needs by evolving beyond its software development roots to provide a flexible, outcomes-driven model that complements Agile, strengthening the core processes essential for sustainable, scalable success. By integrating Capability Maturity Model Integration, a.k.a. CMMI, with Agile, organizations gain the best of both worlds—the agility to respond to change and the process discipline to ensure reliable, high-quality outcomes. In fact, more than 80 percent of all CMMI appraisals since 2019 have Agile methods and lifecycles cited as being within the scope of the appraised organization.

CMMI enables innovation and digital transformation making it complementary to other standards and methodologies. In fact, the reasons organizations adopt CMMI and Agile methods are the same: to deliver more with less, deliver better products and services more consistently, and adapt to customer needs and competitor capabilities at a faster pace. CMMI supports continuous improvement cycles and iterative goal setting to make the Agile process more sustainable and scalable.

Methodology for CMMI and Agile Integration

Below you’ll find five ways CMMI can strengthen agile and DevSecOps development processes.

  1. Process discipline and Agile consistency: Agile development thrives on iterative processes, but without structure, it can be difficult to maintain quality and consistency. CMMI provides a disciplined framework that helps Agile practices become habitual, persistent and scalable.
  2. Alignment with existing Agile practices: Many teams using agile methods like Scrum and Kanban are already aligned with CMMI best practices.
  3. Leadership support for Agile transformation: Achieving true agility requires leadership support and commitment. CMMI’s Governance Practice Area provides guidance on leadership’s role in the sponsorship and governance of performance, processes and related activities.
  4. Embedded context for Agile: The CMMI Model contains context-specific information and practices specific to Agile improving requirements development, sprint estimation accuracy and planning, risk reduction and management, verification and validation, change management, and with more effective cost and schedule management
  5. Transform traditional development: CMMI revolutionizes development methodologies (e.g. waterfall, systems engineering “V”) into repeatable Continuous Implementation/Continuous Deployment, or CI/CD, and integrates with other disciplines such as cybersecurity and product safety.
  6. Creates deeper organizational knowledge: CMMI addresses the fungibility of staff to capture organizational knowledge in processes so if staff leave, or during times of great stress, the knowledge and capability stays intact.

ISACA’s CMMI Performance Solutions is a proven, outcome-based model that enhances organizational capability, enabling faster, better and more cost-effective results. With guidance across eight domains, CMMI V3.0 now provides the flexibility to support diverse sectors in achieving their performance goals, making it an ideal partner to Agile practices.

In the Defense Acquisition University’s Agile 101: An Agile Primer, 46 percent of respondents say inconsistent processes and practices across teams are the most significant barrier to adopting and scaling Agile in their organization — and I think we’ve found the solution!

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