Disciplined Agile Delivery: A Practitioner's Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise

Mark and Scott not only made me think, they reminded me of lots of things that I had forgotten. Things that the agile fashion police have made uncool to talk about. This book is not about fashionable agile; it is about serious change, and it should be required reading for any change leader.

--Dave West, chief product officer, Tasktop, and former VP and research director Forrester Research

Finally, a practical down-to-earth guide that is true to agile values and principles while at the same time acknowledging the realities of the business and the bigger picture. You will find no purist dogma here, nor any hype or hyperbole. Ambler and Lines show how to navigate the varied contexts and constraints of both team-level and enterprise-level needs to hit the agile sweet spot for your team and attain the real benefits of sustainable agility. I wish Id had this book ten years ago!

--Brad Appleton, agile/lean development champion for a large fortune 150 telecommunications company

We have found the guidance from Disciplined Agile Delivery to be a great help in customizing our PMO governance for agile projects at CP Rail. The book will definitely be on the must-read list for teams using agile delivery.

--Larry Shumlich, project manager coach, Canadian Pacific Railway

This book is destined to become the de facto standard reference guide for any organization trying to apply agile/scrum in a complex environment. Scott and Mark provide practical guidance and experiences from successful agile teams on what it takes to bring an end-to-end agile delivery lifecycle to the enterprise.

--Elizabeth Woodward, IBM agile community leader, coauthor of A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum

There are many ways to achieve the benefits of agility, so its really encouraging to see a pragmatic and usable umbrella description that encapsulates most of these without becoming a diluted kind of best of compilation, or a one-size-fits-all. Great reading for anyone orientating themselves in an ever-growing and complex field.

--Nick Clare, agile coach/principal consultant, Ivar Jacobson International

Scott and Mark have compiled an objective treatment of a tough topic. Loaded with insights from successful application under game conditions, this book strikes a good balance between progressive agilists looking to accelerate change and conservative organizational managers looking for scalable solutions.

--Walker Royce, chief software economist, IBM

Disciplined Agile Delivery, a hybrid and experience-based approach to software delivery, reflects the growing trend toward pragmatism and away from the anti-syncretism that has plagued the software development industry for over 40 years. I commend Scott and Mark for writing this book and showing the lea...

Scott W. Ambler is Chief Methodologist for IT with IBM Rational, working with IBM customers around the world to help them to improve their software processes. In addition to Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), he is the founder of the Agile Modeling (AM), Agile Data (AD), Agile Unified Process (AUP), and Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) methodologies and creator of the Agile Scaling Model (ASM). Scott is the (co-)author of 20 books, including Refactoring Databases, Agile Modeling, Agile Database Techniques, The Object Primer, 3rd Edition, and The Enterprise Unified Process. Scott is a senior contributing editor with Dr. Dobb,s Journal. His personal home page is www.ambysoft.com. Mark Lines co-founded UPMentors in 2007. He is a disciplined agile coach and mentors organizations on all aspects of software development. He is passionate about reducing the huge waste in most IT organizations and demonstrates hands-on approaches to speeding execution and improving quality with agile and lean techniques. Mark provides IT assessments and executes course corrections to turn around troubled projects. He writes for many publications and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Mark is also an instructor of IBM Rational and UPMentors courses on all aspects of software development. His Web site is www.UPMentors.com.

Part 1: Introduction to Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)

Chapter 1 Disciplined Agile Delivery in a Nutshell      1

Context Counts--The Agile Scaling Model     3

What Is the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) Process Framework?      5

People First     5

Learning Oriented     7

Agile     8

AHybrid Process Framework     9

IT Solutions over Software     10

Goal-Driven Delivery Lifecycle     11

Enterprise Aware     17

Risk and Value Driven     19

Scalable     22

Concluding Thoughts     23

Additional Resources     23

Chapter 2 Introduction to Agile and Lean     25

Toward a Disciplined Agile Manifesto     27

Disciplined Agile Values     27

Disciplined Agile Principles     29

Lean Principles     33

Reality over Rhetoric     36

Concluding Thoughts     38

Additional Resources     39

Chapter 3 Foundations of Disciplined Agile Delivery     41

The Terminology Tar Pit     43

Scrum     44

Extreme Programming (XP)      48

Agile Modeling (AM)      50

Agile Data     53

Lean Software Development     53

IBM Practices     54

Open Unified Process (OpenUP)      56

And Others     58

Those Who Ignore Agile Practices Put Their Business at Risk     58

Concluding Thoughts     58

Additional Resources     59

Part 2: People First

Chapter 4 Roles, Rights, and Responsibilities     61

The Rights of Everyone     63

The Responsibilities of Everyone     64

The DAD Roles     65

Concluding Thoughts     81

Additional Resources     81

Chapter 5 Forming Disciplined Agile Delivery Teams     83

Strategies for Effective Teams     85

The Whole Team     88

Team Organization Strategies     89

Building Your Team     101

Interacting with Other Teams     104

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