Because the FBI never stops evolving, High Performance Technologies, Inc (HPTi) found themselves struggling to keep up with the changes and maintain their CMMI III certification. Developers were complaining, clients were getting anxious, releases were slipping; but what was the problem? Was it CMMI? Was it the environment? Was it HPTi? Through a disciplined approach to agile development, we found the answers to our questions above. When you’re dealing with a client who is historically challenged with a continuously changing environment, you better be on your toes.

This is a journey starting in 2005 when establishing a new software company in Bangladesh 7000 km away from Denmark. Hiring 20 people in one week in Bangladesh and start using CMMI processes to integrate development in Denmark and Bangladesh. After some challenging time aborting the CMMI project and switching back to agile and lean techniques to make it work. Experience from implementing global big bang Scrum and building a kaizen culture. From long running projects, technical dept and integration nightmares to small batches, continuous integration and faster delivery of business value.

The introduction of Scrum at a CMMI Level 5 company doubled productivity and cut defects by 40% compared to waterfall projects in 2006 by focusing on early testing and time to fix builds. Systematic institutionalized Scrum across all projects and used data driven tools like story efficiency to surface Product Backlog impediments . This allowed them to systematically develop a strategy for a second doubling in productivity. Two teams have achieved a sustainable quadrupling of productivity compared to waterfall projects. We discuss here the strategy to bring the entire company to that level.