Enterprise Modernization

Elizabeth Woodward, co-author of one of my favorite books on scaling agile, A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum, recently posted a video on Youtube entitled Disciplined Agile Delivery – The Shirt, the Summary .  I worked with Elizabeth at IBM...

Clearly mainstream agile practices such as Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) require discipline.  For example, effective Agile teams have the discipline to: Hold short, focused, and to the point daily coordination meetings rather than infrequent and...

Why does DAD not have an explicit role for an Analyst?  This is a hot topic for those in this profession, and a subject that I have been asked to talk on, notably for the IIBA.  Without question classically trained analysts bring much needed soft skills...

Yesterday Mark and I double teamed on a webcast overviewing DAD to a university class.  After the webcast we got the following question: I am wondering if it would make sense to entirely eliminate the word “phase” from DAD’s vocabulary...

In writing the book on DAD, Scott and I focused on a describing a pragmatic approach to being agile.  An alternative approach could have been to describe “how to do agile” planning, modeling, requirements, etc. which could have come off as...

DAD teams focus on producing repeatable results, such as delivering high-quality software which meets stakeholder needs in a timely and cost effective manner.  DAD teams do not strive to follow repeatable processes.  The observation is that because each...

For complex agile projects, deploying (or transitioning) the release to a “live” environment for the users is seldom a trivial exercise.  Most large enterprises have defined milestones, gates, and or reviews that need to be coordinated with many diverse...

A little over a year ago I wrote about the need to rework the agile manifesto, and the ideas from that blog posting underlie many of the advanced ideas that we promote in Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD).  I hope you find it interesting. ...read more

A few days ago I wrote about ranged burndown charts. Interestingly, if you track the ranges over time you end up with a chart such as the one below which corresponds to the estimating cone of uncertainty (depicted by the dashed lines).  It’s interesting...

Previously I discussed the difference between gross velocity and net velocity and now I’d like to show why they’re important.  A ranged burndown chart, an extension to normal burndown charts which apply both the gross and net velocity, is...

Join Scott and I for an interview that both introduces and discusses Disciplined Agile Delivery, what it is, why we need it, and how it helps delivery teams achieve Agility @ Scale.  During the session we will also try to address as many questions from...

Techniques that shorten the time between doing something and getting feedback about it are generally lower risk and result in lower cost to address any changes than techniques with longer feedback cycles.  Many of these techniques require agile team members...

Being able to deliver potentially shippable software increments at the end of each iteration is a good start that clearly requires discipline.  The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework goes one step further and advises you to explicitly...

Julian is presenting to the world-wide Rational User Community on Thursday 26th April at 12EDT. The presentation shares his experiences of using DAD practices to enable his clients to achieve agility in their software delivery, even when their projects...

Hi Mark, Are you guys able to quote any studies in your book on the increase in effectiveness that can be achieved by establishing permanent dedicated cross-functional teams as opposed to teams that get torn down and re-assembled for each project? I am...

The DAD process framework uses a goal-driven approach as we illustrate in the figure below.  Throughout our book we  described each of the DAD phases in turn and suggested strategies for addressing the goals of that phase. For each goal we described the...

We are thrilled to confirm that our new book “Disciplined Agile Delivery:  A Practitioner’s Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise” will be launched at the IBM Innovate conference in Orlando June 3-7.  It will be a busy week...

Despite some agilists reluctance to admit that projects go through phases the DAD process framework explicitly recognizes that they do.  Building serious solutions requires a lot more than just doing the cool construction stuff.  It takes discipline to...

As you can see from this diagram, the DAD primary roles are similar to those of Scrum.  In Scrum, the product owner decides what will be built and in what order.  In DAD we recognize that architecture is a key source of project risk and someone needs...

I think that this blog has been quite successful in getting the word out about Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) and describing key aspects of the framework in advance of the book being released.  However, now that the book is out, it makes sense to evolve...

There are some differences as well as some similarities when comparing agile adoption to agile transformation.  Which does the DAD book address?  One or the other, or both?  I know that I have my opinion, but I am interested in yours.  Add your comments...

I was recently asked a question around the scope of the DAD lifecycle and thought that I would share my answer publicly. The focus of DAD is the delivery portion of the solution lifecycle, from initiation to delivery into production (or the marketplace...

This short video of an interview with Scott on the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) book is worth the look: ...read more

I will be doing a webcast on DAD for InformationWeek on Tue, July 10 at 10:00 PDT.  If you are interested you can register here. ...read more

The recording of my 1-hour InformationWeek webcast on DAD is available here: https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=482700&sessionid=1&key=44991426F6D07634F67A0321147EEA90&sourcepage...