Disciplined Agile Delivery

CategoryAgile Development Methodology

Disciplined Agile Delivery is an open framework that enables simplified decision-making around incremental and iterative development process. It is a people-first, learning-oriented approach to solution delivery, such that combines agile practices with iterative methods.

Methodology Overview

Agile Techniques for Iterative Process

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) framework suggests a robust set of roles for agile solution delivery: primary roles carry on throughout the lifecycle, and secondary roles are typically engaged for a period of time.

The framework promotes the ideas that team members should collaborate closely and learn from each other, and share learnings with other teams to benefit from collective experience and evolve their approach.

Unlike the first generation of agile methods that focus on the build phase of the project, DAD framework addresses the full, end-to-end delivery lifecycle from project initiation all the way to releasing the solution to its end-users. The three main phases of the lifecycle allow to incrementally build a consumable solution over time:

  • Inception — form the initial team, develop common project vision, explore the initial project scope, identify the initial technical strategy, develop the initial release plan and form project work environment.
  • Construction — approve detailed technical design, produce a consumable solution package, address changing stakeholder requirements, and prepare the infrastructure for deploying a candidate release.
  • Transition — deploy the solution and validate it meets reliability, usability and other system qualities.

DAD maintains a risk-value approach throughput the entire lifecycle, by prototyping higher-risk components sooner in the delivery schedule, and applying succeeding early and learning fast principles. The stakeholder consensus is achieved early in the lifecycle, and production readiness is planned ahead the actual release of the solution.

agile

DAD's goal-driven approach allows to avoid being prescriptive, and thereby be more flexible and easier to scale than other agile methods.

Enterprise awareness is an important aspect of self-discipline, as it puts organizational goals over individual project's targets.

DAD provides a foundation for process tailoring and tactically scaling agile methods with effective governance.