What is Disciplined Agile?

Disciplined Agile (DA), is a process decision framework that puts individuals first and offers only lightweight guidance to help teams optimize their processes according to the unique needs of each specific project. As a people-first agile framework, DA is in some ways similar to the Crystal method. In fact, DA is designed to be a hybrid approach combining elements of XP, Scrum, Kanban, and other methodologies.

What is the History of Disciplined Agile?

Although developed at IBM beginning in 2009, Disciplined Agile was first introduced to the world in 2012 with the book Disciplined Agile Delivery. This first iteration of the methodology was focused more broadly on process decisions across an organization. Later, new subsets began to appear applying the concepts to specific areas such as “Disciplined DevOps,” and “Disciplined Agile IT.”

Today the term Disciplined Agile refers broadly to designing effective processes to all of these areas—addressing all areas of solution delivery, including finance, procurement, IT architecture, portfolio management, etc.

Key aspects

Many of the challenges that teams are facing are out of scope for scrum and the teams need to look to other methods with overlapping parts and conflicting terminology. DAD attempts to address these challenges by using a people-first, learning-oriented, hybrid approach to IT solution delivery.

Full delivery lifecycle

Unlike first generation agile methods that typically focus on the construction aspects of the lifecycle, DAD addresses the full delivery lifecycle, from team initiation all the way to delivering a solution to your end users.

Complete

DAD shows how development, modeling, architecture, management, requirements/outcomes, documentation, governance and other strategies fit together in a streamlined whole. DAD does the "process heavy lifting" that other methods leave up to you. 

Context-sensitive

The approach is goal-driven or outcome-driven rather than prescriptive. In doing so, DAD provides contextual advice regarding viable alternatives - what works, what doesn't and more importantly why - and their trade-offs, enabling you to tailor your way of working to address the situation in which you find yourself and do so in a streamlined manner.

Consumable solutions over working software

DAD matures focus from simply producing software to providing consumable solutions that provide real business value to stakeholders. While software is clearly an important part of the deliverable, being solution focused means taking a holistic view of the overall problem. This can lead to suggested updates in hardware, business and organizational processes, and overall organizational structures.

What are the Framework’s Strengths and Weakness?

DA’s strengths include:

• The hybrid nature of this framework pulls the best elements from several proven methodologies
• Allows teams to follow the agile method while also tailoring it to their unique needs

DA’s weaknesses include:

• Not ideal for organizations new to agile, because it does not provide strict enough guidance on how to follow that philosophy
• Because of this lack of guidance, organizations trying to implement the DA framework are more likely to need professional consultants to help with the rollout

Should You Use Disciplined Agile?

For a highly experienced agile team, this type of hybrid model might provide much-needed flexibility. But for teams newly transitioning to the agile approach, DA might make that learning curve too steep and costly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Disciplined Agile Delivery a framework?

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) is a scalable Agile software delivery framework. It takes a people-first, learning-oriented approach to software development and delivery.

How is disciplined agile different from agile?

Agile is a project management methodology that emphasizes adaptability in responding to change. Disciplined agile takes the ideas behind agile and expands them into a toolkit that leverages Agile practices as well as others to provide guidance based on the context your team is working within.

What are the 4 views of disciplined agile?

DA addresses four views:

• Mindset. DA builds on the foundations of agile and lean to address enterprise realities.
• People. DA describes the roles, responsibilities, and team structures you should have in place.
• Flow. DA describes the dynamic aspects of processes via lifecycle and workflow diagrams.
• Practices.

What are the three phases of disciplined agile delivery?

First, the DAD delivery life cycle explicitly calls out three phases for agile project teams:

• Inception. Team initiation activities occur during this phase. ...
• Construction. During this phase a delivery team will produce a potentially consumable solution on an incremental basis. ...
• Transition.

What are the eight principles of disciplined agile?

These principles are:

• Delight customers. We need to go beyond satisfying our customers' needs, beyond meeting their expectations and strive to delight them. ...
• Be awesome.
• Context counts.
• Be pragmatic
• Choice is good.
• Optimize flow.
• Organize around products/services (new).
• Enterprise awareness.

What are 4 agile Behaviours?

These include respect, collaboration, improvement and learning cycles, pride in ownership, focus on delivering value, and the ability to adapt to change.