1. © Disciplined Agile Consortium
Taking Scrum to the Next Level with
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Scott Ambler + Associates

2. Let’s explore a few important topics….
What is Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)?
Scrum vs. DAD
Roles on DAD Teams
DAD is a Hybrid Framework
DAD Lifecycles
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

3. Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
Introduction to DAD
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
The key characteristics of DAD:
People-first
Goal-driven
Hybrid agile
Learning-oriented
Full delivery lifecycle
Solution focused
Risk-value lifecycle
Enterprise aware
Foundation of the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework
The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) decision process framework is a people-first, learning-oriented hybrid agile approach to IT solution delivery. It has a risk-value delivery lifecycle, is goal-driven, is enterprise aware, and is scalable.”
Many organizations start their agile journey by adopting Scrum because it describes a good strategy for leading agile software teams. However, Scrum is only part of what is required to deliver sophisticated solutions to your stakeholders. Invariably teams need to look to other methods to fill in the process gaps that Scrum purposely ignores. When looking at other methods there is considerable overlap and conflicting terminology that can be confusing to practitioners as well as outside stakeholders. Worse yet people don’t always know where to look for advice or even know what issues they need to consider. To address these challenges the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process decision framework provides a more cohesive approach to agile solution delivery.
There are clearly some interesting aspects to the DAD framework. DAD is a hybrid approach which extends Scrum with proven strategies from Agile Modeling (AM), Extreme Programming (XP), Unified Process (UP), Kanban, Lean Software Development, Outside In Development (OID) and several other methods. DAD is a non-proprietary, freely available framework. DAD extends the construction-focused lifecycle of Scrum to address the full, end-to-end delivery lifecycle from project initiation all the way to delivering the solution to its end users. It also supports lean and continuous delivery versions of the lifecycle: unlike other agile methods, DAD doesn’t prescribe a single lifecycle because it recognizes that one process size does not fit all. DAD includes advice about the technical practices such as those from Extreme Programming (XP) as well as the modeling, documentation, and governance strategies missing from both Scrum and XP. But, instead of the prescriptive approach seen in other agile methods, including Scrum, the DAD framework takes a goals-driven approach. In doing so DAD provides contextual advice regarding viable alternatives and their trade-offs, enabling you to tailor DAD to effectively address the situation in which you find yourself. By describing what works, what doesn’t work, and more importantly why, DAD helps you to increase your chance of adopting strategies that will work for you.
For more information, visit
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Copyright 2014 Disciplined Agile Consortium

4. © Disciplined Agile Consortium
Scrum Vs. DAD
Scrum
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
Limited roles
Addresses some aspects of software development, in particular:
Collaboration
Change management
Purposefully leaves technical practices up to you
Focuses on Construction-portion of the lifecycle
Robust set of roles
Addresses all aspects of solution delivery, including:
Collaboration
Change management
Architecture
Analysis
Testing
Development
Deployment
Supports several delivery lifecycles
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

5. Primary Roles on DAD Teams
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Introduction to DAD
Primary Roles on DAD Teams
Team Lead
Agile process expert, keeps team focused on achievement of goals, removes impediments
Product Owner
Owns the product vision, scope and priorities of the solution
Architecture Owner
Owns the architecture decisions and technical priorities, mitigates key technical risks
Team Member
Cross-functional team members that deliver the solution
January 2017 update:
Updated definition of stakeholder
Using the role graphics
Turned into a build slide
Stakeholder
Includes the customer but also other stakeholders such as the project sponsor, operations engineers, support staff, architecture, database groups, finance, and so on
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

6. Secondary Roles on DAD Teams
Disciplined Agile Delivery
Secondary Roles on DAD Teams
Independent Tester
A test/quality professional outside of the team who validates their work
Specialist
Someone in a specialist role, such as business analyst, program manager, or enterprise architect
Domain Expert (Subject Matter Expert)
Someone with deep knowledge of the domain, such as a legal expert or marketing expert who is brought in as needed to share their expertise
Technical Expert
Someone with deep technical knowledge, such as a security engineer or user experience (UX) professional, whose help is needed for a short period
January 2017 update:
Using the role graphics
Turned into a build slide
Integrator
Someone responsible for the operation of the overall team build
Note: “The secondary” DAD roles typically occur at scale
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
Domain
Expert
Technical
Expert
Specialist
Integrator
© Scott Ambler + Associates

7. DAD is a Hybrid Framework
Scrum
Extreme Programming
Lean
Kanban
Unified Process
Agile Modeling
Agile Data
“Traditional”
Outside In Dev.
DevOps
…and more
SAFe
DAD leverages proven strategies from several sources, providing a decision framework to guide your adoption and tailoring of them in a context-driven manner.
The DAD framework does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to answering the question “How do all of the various agile techniques fit together”
In many ways DAD is the process glue that connects the various agile practices.
The DAD framework leverages ideas from a wide variety of agile, lean, iterative, and even traditional sources.
Timing – 1 min
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8. © Disciplined Agile Consortium
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) Supports Several Lifecycles
Agile
Continuous
Delivery: Agile
Exploratory
Lean
Continuous
Delivery: Lean
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© Disciplined Agile Consortium

9. © Disciplined Agile Consortium
A High Level Lifecycle
One of the key aspects of the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process decision framework is that it promotes a full, end-to-end, solution delivery lifecycle. The figure on this slide overviews a high-level view of the DAD lifecycle. It is a three-phase lifecycle, more on this in a minute, where you incrementally build a consumable solution over time. We start with this high-level view so that we can explore several important concepts before diving into details.
First, the DAD lifecycle explicitly calls out three phases:
Inception. During this phase project initiation activities occur. Although “phase” tends to be a swear word within the agile community, the reality is that the vast majority of teams do some up front work at the beginning of a project. While some people will mistakenly refer to this effort as Sprint/Iteration 0 it is easy to observe that on average this effort takes longer than a single iteration (the 2013 Agile Initiation survey, found the average agile team spends about a month in Inception whereas the most common iteration/sprint length is two weeks). So in DAD’s Inception phase we do some very lightweight visioning activities to properly frame the project. It takes discipline to keep Inception short.
Construction. During this phase a DAD team will produce a potentially consumable solution on an incremental basis. They may do so via a set of iterations (Sprints in Scrum parlance) or do so via a lean, continuous flow approach (different versions of the lifecycle are discussed later). The team applies a hybrid of practices from Scrum, XP, Agile Modeling, Agile Data, and other methods to deliver the solution.
Transition. DAD recognizes that for sophisticated enterprise agile projects deploying the solution to the stakeholders is often not a trivial exercise. DAD teams, as well as the enterprise overall, will streamline their deployment processes so that over time this phase becomes shorter and ideally disappears from adopting continuous deployment strategies. It takes discipline to evolve Transition from a phase to an activity.
Timing – 3 min
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10. Scrum Construction Lifecycle
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Introduction to DAD
Scrum Construction Lifecycle
Timing – 1 min
A good start…
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

11. A Scrum Delivery Lifecycle
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Introduction to DAD
A Scrum Delivery Lifecycle
Instructor – this is the reality. Surveys show that all projects perform some kind of Inception and Deployment (Transition)
Timing – 1 min
…but this is how agile teams actually work…
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

12. Unbranded Agile Delivery Lifecycle
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Introduction to DAD
Unbranded Agile Delivery Lifecycle
Big Ideas:
All work items placed in list
Use a Risk-Value prioritization
Emphasis on Consumable Solution
Timing – 3 min
…and it’s time to abandon the branding.
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

13. Governed Delivery Lifecycle
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Introduction to DAD
Governed Delivery Lifecycle
Big Ideas
Governance is crucial
What are we building?
How long is it going to take?
No answers = no funding
Do hard things more often until they get easy (frequently using automation)
System integration
Deployment
Ongoing questions
Do we keep going?
Are we ready to ship?
Timing – 5 min
Disciplined agile teams are guided by senior management…
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

14. Disciplined Agile Delivery: Introduction to DAD
Full Lifecycle
Showing the reality that there are activities BEFORE Inception and AFTER Transition
Timing – 2 min
…and realize they work in an organizational ecosystem...
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

15. Disciplined Agile Delivery: Basic Lifecycle
This lifecycle presents a more detailed view of what we call the Agile/Basic DAD lifecycle which extends Scrum’s construction lifecycle. In addition to this being a more detailed view of the lifecycle, there are several interesting aspects to this lifecycle:
It’s iteration based. Like many agile methods, including both Scrum and XP, the solution is built incrementally in a time-boxed manner. These timeboxes are called iterations (what Scrum calls sprints).
It uses non-Scrum terminology. Although the lifecycle is Scrum-based we chose to use non-branded terminology in DAD, in the case of this diagram the term iteration instead of sprint. The terminology doesn’t really matter, so if you’re more comfortable with Scrum terminology use that instead.
It shows inputs from outside the delivery lifecycle. Although the overview diagram above showed only the delivery lifecycle, the detailed diagram below shows that something occurs before the project before Inception and that agile teams often get new requirements (in the form of change requests and defect reports) coming in from production. These inputs provide important context for the overall delivery lifecycle.
There is a work item list, not a product backlog. DAD has a greater scope than Scrum, and when you take this greater scope into account you begin to realize you need a more robust change management approach than Scrum’s product backlog. Work items include requirements, defects, and other non-functionality oriented work such as training, vacations, and assisting other teams. All of this work needs to be prioritized somehow, not just implementation of requirements. For more on this, read Agile Best Practice: Prioritized Requirements.
In includes explicit milestones. Along the bottom of the lifecycle diagram there is an indication of suggested light-weight milestones that DAD teams should strive to meet. Such milestones are an important aspect of agile governance.
We call this the basic/agile lifecycle because it’s likely where you’re going to start with DAD. Common scenarios for adopting this version of the lifecycle include situations where you’re extending Scrum to be sufficient for your needs or you’re transitioning from RUP to a disciplined agile approach.
Timing – 3 min
…so there’s a fair bit to the agile delivery lifecycle.
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16. Disciplined Agile Delivery: Agile Continuous Delivery Lifecycle
Instructor notes:
Common for stable teams doing Agile
Iterations are typically 1-2 weeks, although 1 day also common
At the end of the iteration you release into production
More like a “very regular delivery” lifecycle than a continuous delivery lifecycle
May 2017 update:
Added this slide
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

17. Agile Terminology: There Are No Standards!
Disciplined Agile Delivery: Agile Foundations
Agile Terminology: There Are No Standards!
DAD Term
XP Term
Scrum Term
UP Term
Iteration
Sprint
Team Lead
Coach
ScrumMaster*
Project Manager*
Coordination meeting
Daily Meeting
(Daily) Scrum meeting
Meeting
Retrospective
Sprint retrospective
Demo
Sprint demo
Big Ideas
Methodologies overlap
All these methods are incomplete
DAD combines, fills in gaps
Coach is another term for team lead
Timebox is another term for iteration
Daily stand-up, or stand-up, are other terms for coordination meeting
Reflection is another term for retrospective
Timing – 2 min
* These roles aren’t completely the same
© Disciplined Agile Consortium
© Disciplined Agile Consortium

18. © Disciplined Agile Consortium
Parting Thoughts
Scrum is a great start, but in practice it proves to be only a very small part of the overall agile picture
Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) describes a context-sensitive, streamlined approach to solution delivery
DAD addresses the myriad of issues that Scrum leaves up to you
You can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your agile adoption efforts by migrating from Scrum to DAD
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19. © Disciplined Agile Consortium
Join Today
Sign up at DisciplinedAgileConsortium.org and become a member It’s free Have access to new and upcoming information about Disciplined Agile strategies
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20. © Disciplined Agile Consortium
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 information site, DisciplinedAgileDelivery.com, provides a wealth of articles and blog postings about Disciplined Agile topics. The Disciplined Agile discussion forum, LinkedIn.com/groups/ , is a meeting place for Disciplined Agile practitioners to share their experiences and to get questions answered.
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