Is Disciplined Agile Still Relevant?
Joshua Barnes
I help organizations, leadership, and teams improve value delivery with agile, lean, hybrid, and value stream management.
That is a question I was asked by a senior leader I worked with years ago. I have not written about DA much lately, and this interaction sparked some new energy into sharing more about what has been happening with DA lately.
Before PMI purchased DA, I led an organizational transformation at a large company that used DA as the basis for developing ways of working that suited them. Now, many years later, I get contacted by one of the then-senior PMO members who is a senior leader at a different organization. They messaged me and shared that they had a few of their PMO members and leads look at DA. The following is a bit of the message:
"…sure, PMI brought credibility and strong backing to DA, but my staff cannot find anything that appears actionable. Some like what they see but are skeptical that we could do anything with it. I am reaching out to you before we move DA into the bin with some of the other approaches we investigated…."
Uh-oh, the same old problem has been there for years. DA looks great, but we don't see how to make this work. We don't want to go through another colossal spend with an army of consultants to end up no better off.
Fair enough and why this article will be quite different than anything I have written. I will show content that we usually only have in proposals or demonstrations when near to agreeing on an engagement vs. putting it out publicly, and I will show you via a video vs just writing about it.
At this juncture, many would have hoped or expected that PMI would have actionable solutions for DA, but that is still in the purview of consulting companies.
If you want to see how to utilize DA to improve your team's value delivery, watch this short video.
The content I shared in that video is a plug-in, power-up or jet-pack for DA. I use this in our consulting engagements. We also sell all the content to organizations that want to use an established and reusable set of assets internally by their employees.
We have reference models (comprehensive examples), adoption accelerator templates, and micro-workshops (training materials) available. What would take 1000s of hours to make and require people with the skills and experience to do it can be purchased directly along with a train-the-trainer packable to upskill your organization's internal talent.
If you want to give DA a go or have struggled to get results with adopting DA or agile of any kind, please message me here on LinkedIn or use my Calendly: https://calendly.com/processmentors to set up a quick chat.
I am looking for at least one new organization I can personally work with, and at Process Mentors, we are always looking for organizations we can help.
Technical Project Manager, PMI Certified Disciplined Agile Scrum Master
2 个月Having explored the materials available through PMI - it looks like they're trying to put together the tools but haven't dedicated the resources to making a site that is even navigable. Kudos to you!
I help organizations, leadership, and teams improve value delivery with agile, lean, hybrid, and value stream management.
3 个月Add-on to my reply to Alen, I make this offer to anyone reading this – if you are at a company and have struggled to see improvements that lead to improved value delivery (outcomes), schedule a session with me, and I will show you a suite of micro-workshops (2-4 hours delivery time), end-to-end examples, adoption accelerator templates, and quick starts. I feel confident that I have not seen anything similar from another consulting or training company. But if anyone reading this has something similar, please make a post.
I help organizations, leadership, and teams improve value delivery with agile, lean, hybrid, and value stream management.
3 个月Hi Alan Zucker, that’s a good question. Time has shown that DA is an excellent choice for any organization. Still, they will likely never see any meaningful change without the tools and supporting assets to make it actionable. I have seen a significant drop in DA certification training in the marketplace, and I think for good reason. What is needed is smaller training increments (micro-workshops) that yield action coupled with what is required to put what was learned into practice. Without a mechanism for adopting a new approach, evolving the current one, or even adopting a new practice or two, the outcome is “well, that’s a good idea” vs. “we did that, and here is how it helped.” I think the future is for organizations to have what is needed to ensure that their approaches are fit for purpose now and in the future. That requires some level of change in the way of working as conditions change. The approaches need to support value delivery across the value stream, not just what one team wants vs. another. What I showed in the video that is part of this article is a tiny view into what I feel DA should have been providing for organizations.
Coach, Consultant, Instructor, Keynote Speaker & Expert Witness in Project Management. Agile & Leadership
3 个月Joshua Barnes...Great question, "Is DA still relevant?" I agree that it has a lot to offer. Where do you see it playing in the marketplace these days?