Certification and Adaptation of a Process

Since the ISO 900x wave, a lot of enterprise-wide software development processes have been certified. A certified software development process does not necessarily contradict an agile process, provided that the certification does not result in stagnation.

However, as it has often been observed in practice: Certification leads most often to paralysis. Certification only records the status quo. But innovations do not evolve by sticking to something. Innovations evolve by breaking rules.

It is not the intention of certification to introduce stagnation, but every so often, people who pass the certification are so happy that they finally managed it, that they never want to touch the material again. This is the point where stagnation comes in. Stagnation is of course not the idea of certification itself. Instead, there is the need to continue the process of realizing and verifying, and not stopping with a sigh of relief after the certification has become true.

Standardization in agile

It is easy to change a certified process if it was developed with the knowledge that the world can change or that the process can be tailored to changing circumstances. Otherwise, the effort needed to make a change is so high that nobody would ever do it.

Note: ISO 900x certification neither guarantees the quality of the process nor the quality of its outcome (such as the software application, for instance). The only thing it guarantees is that each and every step is documented, without any qualifying information as to whether, for example, a particular step really supports the quality of the outcome.