1.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 1
Choose Your
WoW!
Disciplined Agile Strategies
for Optimizing Your
Way of Working (WoW)

2.
Scott Ambler
• Helps enterprise-class organizations around the world
to improve their processes and organization structures
• Thought leader of:
– Agile Modeling (AM) method
– Agile Data (AD) method
• Co-creator of the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework
• Author of 20+ books
• scott [at] scottambler.com
• Advisory Board Member
– SEMAT
– ScaleFree
– Architectural Thinking Framework
© Disciplined Agile Consortium - @scottwambler 2
@scottwambler

3.
Agenda
• Step 1: Understand the Situation
• Step 2: Adopt a New Mindset
• Step 3: Adopt a Continuous Improvement Strategy
• Step 4: Choose Your WoW!
• Q&A
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 3

4.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 4
Step 1:
Understand the Situation

5.
Context Counts
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 5
Start by identifying the
situation that your team
faces so that you can
tailor your WoW to
address that context

6.
Disciplined
Agile Enterprise
Disciplined
Agile IT
Disciplined
DevOps
DAD
The Disciplined Agile Framework
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/the-agile-tractor-engine-analogy/
6

7.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 7
Step 2:
Adopt a New Mindset

8.
The Seven Principles
of Disciplined Agile
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
Delight
Customers
Pragmatism
Be
Awesome
Context
Counts
Choice is
Good
Optimize
Flow
Enterprise
Awareness
8

9.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 9
Step 3: Adopt a Continuous
Improvement Strategy

10.
Adopting a Prescriptive Method Helps a Bit
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 10

11.
Continuous
Improvement
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 11
Identify a Potential
Improvement
Experiment with
the new WoW
Assess
Effectiveness
Adopt the new
WoW
Abandon the new
WoW
Share Learnings
with Others

12.
Continuous Improvement is Longer Lasting
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 12

13.
Guided
Continuous
Improvement
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 13
Identify a Potential
Improvement
Experiment with
the new WoW
Assess
Effectiveness
Adopt the new
WoW
Abandon the new
WoW
Share Learnings
with Others
Apply the
Disciplined Agile (DA)
toolkit to
identify better options

14.
It Works Even Better With Light-Weight Guidance
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 14

15.
You Can Combine Strategies
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 15

16.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 16
Step 4: Choose Your Own
Way of Working (WoW)!

17.
Tailoring Your WoW
• Initially:
– Understand the situation that you face
– Choose the most appropriate lifecycle
– Choose the best strategies/practices that your
team can perform
• Over time:
– Regularly reflect
– Experiment with new strategies
– Evolve your WoW
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 17

18.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 18
Choosing a Lifecycle
Agile
Lean
Continuous
Delivery: Agile
Continuous
Delivery: Lean
Exploratory
Program

19.
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Basic Lifecycle
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 19
An enterprise-ready, Scrum-based project lifecycle.

20.
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Lean Lifecycle
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 20
An enterprise-ready, Kanban-based project lifecycle

21.
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Lean Continuous Delivery
Lifecycle
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 21
Lean on a
stable team.

22.
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Agile Continuous
Delivery Lifecycle
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 22
Agile on a
stable team.

23.
DAD Exploratory “Lean Startup” Lifecycle
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 23
A low-risk strategy to initiate development of a new product.

24.
The Program
Lifecycle
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 24
A lifecycle for a team
of teams.

25.
25
Governance is Built Into DAD
• Governance strategies built into DAD:
– Risk-value lifecycle
– Light-weight milestone reviews
– “Standard” opportunities for increased visibility and to steer the team
provided by agile
– Enterprise awareness
– Robust stakeholder definition
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

26.
LeSS
XP
…and moreAgile Data
DA is a Hybrid Framework
26
Unified Process Agile Modeling
Kanban“Traditional”Spotify
DevOps Scrum
DA leverages proven strategies from several sources,
providing a decision framework to guide your adoption and
tailoring of them in a context-driven manner.
SAFe
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

27.
The Process Goals of Disciplined Agile Delivery
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 27

28.
Disciplined Agilists Choose Their Practices
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
28
Goal
Decision
Point
Advantages
Disadvantages
Considerations
* Option
Default Option
*
Explore the Initial
Scope
Form the
Initial Team
Address Changing
Stakeholder Needs
Source
Evolution strategy
Size
Structure
Member skills
Completeness
Longevity
Geographic distribution
Organization distribution
Time zone distribution
Support the team
Availability
Indicates a preference for
the options towards the top
Co-located
Partially dispersed
Distributed subteams
Fully dispersed

29.
Goal: Form
Initial Team
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
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30.
Goal: Secure Funding
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 30

31.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 31
Goal: Address Changing
Stakeholder needs

32.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 32
Goal: Produce a
Potentially
Consumable
Solution

33.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 33
Continuous
Improvement

34.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 34

35.
Evolving Your WoW: Practices
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 35
• Tailoring sessions
– Early in Inception for Inception
– Late in Inception for Construction
– Late in Construction for Transition
• Retrospectives
– Identify a problem area
– Look in the DA knowledgebase for suggestions
– Choose a likely candidate to experiment with
• Experiment
– Try out a practice/strategy in your environment
– Measure the results
– Aim is to determine whether the new strategy works
well for you

36.
Evolving Your
WoW:
Lifecycles
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 36

37.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
Parting Thoughts
• Context counts - Every team is unique, facing
a unique situation
• Choice is good - Agile teams own their own
process, they get to choose their Way of
Working (WoW)
• Pragmatism – There are hundreds of practices
and strategies to choose from, we need to
choose the ones that are right for us
37

38.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 38

39.
Join Today
Sign up at DisciplinedAgileConsortium.org
and become a member
Have access to new and upcoming information about
Disciplined Agile strategies
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 39

40.
The Disciplined Agile Consortium (DAC) supports and evolves the Disciplined Agile
process decision framework.
The DAC site, DisciplinedAgileConsortium.org, provides information on curriculum
and learning resources for Disciplined Agile practitioners. It is also the home of the
Disciplined Agile certification program.
The Disciplined Agile blog, DisciplinedAgileDelivery.com, provides a wealth of
articles and blog postings about Disciplined Agile topics.
The Disciplined Agile discussion forum, LinkedIn.com/groups/4685263, is a meeting
place for Disciplined Agile practitioners to share their experiences and to get
questions answered.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 40

41.
The Disciplined Agile Framework
© Disciplined Agile Consortium 41