How does an agile software development team choose its way of working, and do so in a context sensitive manner? This was presented at the Toronto Agile Conference on October 30, 2018.

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

5. Context Counts
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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/
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7. © Disciplined Agile Consortium 7
Step 2:
Adopt a New Mindset

8. The Seven Principles
of Disciplined Agile
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Delight
Customers
Pragmatism
Be
Awesome
Context
Counts
Choice is
Good
Optimize
Flow
Enterprise
Awareness
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9. © Disciplined Agile Consortium 9
Step 3: Adopt a Continuous
Improvement Strategy

10. Adopting a Prescriptive Method Helps a Bit
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11. Continuous
Improvement
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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
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13. Guided
Continuous
Improvement
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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
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15. You Can Combine Strategies
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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
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18. © Disciplined Agile Consortium 18
Choosing a Lifecycle
Agile
Lean
Continuous
Delivery: Agile
Continuous
Delivery: Lean
Exploratory
Program

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

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

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

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

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

24. The Program
Lifecycle
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A lifecycle for a team
of teams.

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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
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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
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28. Disciplined Agilists Choose Their Practices
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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
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30. Goal: Secure Funding
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Goal: Address Changing
Stakeholder needs

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Goal: Produce a
Potentially
Consumable
Solution

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Continuous
Improvement

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35. Evolving Your WoW: Practices
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• 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
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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
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process decision framework.
The DAC site, DisciplinedAgileConsortium.org, provides information on curriculum
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41. The Disciplined Agile Framework
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