Applying Disciplined Agile: Become a Learning Organization

Applying Disciplined Agile
Become a Learning Organization
Scott W. Ambler
Consulting Methodologist
Ambysoft Inc.
© Ambysoft Inc. AgileData.org AgileModeling.com 1

Important Notice
• “Disciplined Agile” is a registered trademark of Project
Management Institute (PMI)
• Disciplined Agile (DA) is owned, supported, and evolved by PMI
• DA was originally created by Scott Ambler and Mark Lines
• References to DA material are provided throughout this slide
deck
• The primary reference for DA is PMI.org/disciplined-agile
• The advice provided in this presentation is based on the
experience of Scott Ambler
!

Scott Ambler
• scott@scottambler.com
• Twitter: @scottwambler
• linkedin.com/in/sambler/
Ambysoft.com
Thought Leader
AgileData.org
Thought Leader
AgileModeling.com

Agenda
• Successful “agile transformations”
• Our organizational environment
• Disciplined Agile (DA) overview
• Team-level improvement
• Organizational improvement
• Parting advice

Successful
”Agile Transformations”

Recognize that most “agile
transformations” fail

Start where you are

Adopting a framework is
only a first step

Strive to become a learning
organization
A learning organization is skilled at creating,
acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at
modifying its behavior to reflect new
knowledge and insights.
David A. Garvin, HBR July 1993

Strive to become a
purposeful organization
A purposeful organization has a
collective goal that is genuinely in the
public’s good and in their own self
interest.
Peter Drucker, The Practice of
Management
Resource: https://Intersection.Group

Our Organizational
Environment

Top 7 Threats To Your Organization
1. Increasing pace of change
2. Increasing complexity
3. The great reshuffle
4. Climate change
5. Technical debt
6. Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI)
7. Transformation fatigue

Top 7 Opportunities For Your Organization
1. Increasing pace of change
2. Robotics and AI
3. The great reshuffle
4. Increasing holistic thinking
5. Increasing agility
6. New ways of working (WoW)
7. New ways of thinking (WoT)

Disciplined Agile

Disciplined Agile (DA) Architecture
Mindset
How do you think?
Your ways of thinking (WoT)
People
Who are you and how are
you organized?
Roles, Responsibilities,
Team Structures,
Organizational Structures
Flow
How do you
work
together?
Your
collaborative
way of
working
(WoW)
Practices
What do you
do?
Your detailed
WoW
Source: https://PMI.org/disciplined-agile/ip-architecture

Mindset: Beyond the Agile Manifesto
Principles
• Delight Customers
• Be Awesome
• Context Counts
• Choice is Good
• Optimize Flow
• Organize Around Offerings
• Enterprise Awareness
Promises
• Create Psychological Safety
• Embrace Diversity
• Accelerate Value Realization
• Collaborate Proactively
• Make Work Visible
• Make Workflow Visible
• Improve Predictability
• Keep Workloads Within Capacity
• Improve Continuously
Guidelines
• Validate our Learnings
• Apply Design Thinking
• Attend to Relationships Through Value
Stream
• Effective Environments That Foster Joy
• Change Culture By Improving the
System
• Semi-Autonomous Self-Organizing
Teams
• Adopt Measures to Improve
Outcomes
• Leverage and Enhance Organizational
Assets
Philosophies
Ways of thinking (WoT) specific to organizational domains (Marketing, Security, Enterprise Architecture, …)
Source: https://PMI.org/disciplined-agile/ip-architecture/waysofthinking

Practices: Choice is Good
Sources: https://PMI.org/disciplined-agile/ip-architecture/how-to-read-process-goal-diagrams
https://PMI.org/disciplined-agile/process/asset-management/asset-management-practices
Practices are contextual in nature
There is always multiple ways of doing
things
There is no such thing as a ”best practice”,
but in a given situation some practices tend
to be more effective (usually) than others
Fund (Asset)
Usage
Funded reuse/usage team
Asset-level funding
Team-based funding
No funding
Chargeback
Publish
Assets
Announce availability
Describe asset
Publish

Enterprise Scope: Organizational Domains
Marketing
Finance
Vendor
Mgmt
Enterprise
Arch.
Strategy
Source: https://PMI.org/disciplined-agile/ip-architecture/process-blades
The DA tool kit addresses all aspects of an enterprise
The tool kit is organized into organizational domains
called “process blades”
Each process blade is described in terms of:
• Mindset
• People
• Practices
• Flow
And many
more…
Governance

Team-Level
Improvement

Teams must choose their own WoW
Source: https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/wow
1. Assess Your
Situation
2. Choose a
Lifecycle
3. Process
Tailoring
Workshop
4. Evolve Your
WoW
The DA tool kit captures many techniques for teams to choose and evolve their
own way of working (WoW).
Early in the life of a team Ongoing

Embrace the fact that teams are unique

You can do better than just “failing fast”

Guided Continuous
Improvement (GCI)
Source: https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/gci
Plan
Do
Study
Act
• Identify issue
• Identify potential improvement using
the DA tool kit
• Identify how to measure success
• Run an experiment by
trying out the new WoW
• Measure to assess the effectiveness
• Adopt effective WoW
• Abandon ineffective WoW
• Share learnings with others

Measure Your Improvement

Organizational
Improvement

Organizational Improvement

The DA Transformation Strategy
Source: https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/process/transformation
The aim of the transformation process blade is to provide advice for how to successfully run a “DA
transformation”.
Important: The goal is to learn how to thrive as an organization, not to adopt DA.
Assess
1
Improve
2
Thrive
3

Continuous Improvement Strategies in DA
Source: https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/process/continuous-improvement
Communities
of Practice
(CoPs)
The aim of the continuous improvement process blade is to capture strategies that organizations can
apply to share their learnings across teams.
Centers of
Excellence
(CoEs)
Value stream
modeling
Root-cause
analysis
Open
spaces Hackathons
Measuring
improvement
And many
more…

Parting Advice

Your goal should be to become a purposeful, learning
organization
You can do this
It’s going to be hard work
The work will never end
Invest in your people: Get them trained in DA
30

Thank You!
• scott@scottambler.com
• Twitter: @scottwambler
• linkedin.com/in/sambler/
Ambysoft.com
Thought Leader
AgileData.org
Thought Leader
AgileModeling.com

Additional Slides

The Agile Data Mission
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for data initiatives.
Learn more at AgileData.org

The Agile Modeling Mission
To share proven and effective strategies for
modeling/mapping and documentation.
Learn more at AgileModeling.com

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