One of the twelve principles supporting agile manifesto is:

Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

But, in a real life organization setup just trusting the team to get the job done may not be sufficient.

Funding for every project comes out  somebody's budget! He is the sponsor.

The budget would have been allocated keeping some end result in mind. The consequence of not delivering the end result in minor hiccups or it can be a major catastrophe.

Either case the sponsor would want to know – want to get a feel of how the project is progressing. At any point of time he would want to be aware of the progress and the chances of failure or slippage.

Typically there will be many downstream activities and event linked to the successful completion. Advance notice of any possible problem is very important.

Unfortunately agile practices are silent about “Senior management visibility” and “Risk management”.

This is one area where CMMi can help. The are several process area which provide guideline of how to achieve this:

• Project Monitoring and Control (PMC) at Level 2
• Integrated Project Management (IPM) at Level 3
• Risk Management (RSKM) at Level 3

Udayan Banerjee on Google+

More Reading

• Off-shoring and Moving from Waterfall to Agile