Agile Maturity Model Applied to Building and Releasing Software

This 8 page paper presents a maturity model for building and releasing software. This model is designed to serve several purposes:

• To provide a structure for assessing your team or organizational capabilities in building and releasing software
• To provide an approach for planning and executing improvements to existing practices

We start with a discussion of the Agile Maturity Model, move on to building and releasing software, present the maturity model, and then describe how to use it.

The Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI®) is intended to institutionalize a collection of pre-defined delivery practices and ensure their consistent execution so as to increase the probability that a team or organization can successfully complete projects. The definition of “successful” includes completing the project on time and in budget.

In contrast, the Agile Maturity Model is an internal tool used at ThoughtWorks and other organizations to help organizations understand their current practices, and work to improve them with the goal of increased ability to respond to changing business conditions, and better harnessing innovation.

The model used here is a both a specialization and an adaptation of the Agile Maturity Model. Although we share the same goals as the Agile Maturity Model, we have changed the definition of the levels so as to apply to the practices related to building and releasing software.