Exploring the Layers of the Disciplined Agile (DA) Tool Kit

Each business challenge is both unique to your situation and informed by traditional conventions. By using the Disciplined Agile (DA) tool kit, you and your team can better understand how seemingly segmented activities - such as security, product management, portfolio management, solution delivery, and finance to name a few - can work together in a context-sensitive manner.

By understanding what these activities should address, as well as the tradeoffs associated with each, you can make more informed decisions for better business agility. To help you to navigate the wealth of advice contained in the DA tool kit, we have organized it into a four layers. The four layers of the DA tool kit are:

1. Foundation. The Foundation layer provides the conceptual underpinnings of the DA tool kit. This includes the DA Mindset; foundational concepts from agile, lean, and serial/traditional ways of working (WoW); people-oriented issues such as roles, responsibilities, and teaming structures; and of course how to choose your WoW.
2. Disciplined DevOps. Disciplined DevOps is the streamlining of IT solution development and IT operations activities, and supporting enterprise-IT activities, to provide more effective outcomes to an organization.
3. Value Streams. The value streams layer encompasses the capabilities required to provide value streams to your customers. A value stream is the set of actions that take place to add value to a customer from the initial request through realization of value by the customer. A value stream begins, ends, and hopefully continues with a customer. The value stream begins with the initial concept, moves through various stages for one or more development teams, and on through final delivery and support. It’s not enough to be innovative in ideas if these ideas can’t be realized in the marketplace or in the company. DA FLEX is the glue that ties an organization’s strategies in that it visualizes what an effective value stream looks like, enabling you to make decisions for improving each part of the organization within the context of the whole.
4. Disciplined Agile Enterprise (DAE). A Disciplined Agile Enterprise (DAE) is able to anticipate and respond swiftly to changes in the marketplace. It does this through an organizational culture and structure that facilitates change within the context of the situation that it faces. Such organizations require a learning mindset in the mainstream business and underlying lean and agile processes to drive innovation.