Why is Disciplined Agile So Complex?
We often hear the refrain that Disciplined Agile (DA) is too complex, that it needs to be simpler. Believe me, we’re all for simplicity and we do everything that we can to make DA as simple as possible. However, to be fair, we often find that the people complaining about complexity are often coming at the situation from a different point of view than we are.
We recently published a detailed blog at https://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/why-is-disciplined-agile-so-complex/ where we work through how DA reflects the necessary complexity that we face as IT professionals. This blog explores the following issues:
- There is a natural complexity in what we do
- Enterprise solution delivery is inherently complex
- Enterprise IT is inherently complex
- Choice is good, but having choices adds complexity
- People underestimate the complexity of the familiar
- DA purposefully includes some questionable choices
- Most people prefer to focus on a small part of the overall process
The interesting thing is that every single time we’ve had this conversation with someone, and they were willing to consider the issues above, they’ve told us that we needed to include one or more techniques that they’ve found effective in practice. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. In short, the conversation goes from DA is too complex to DA is not complex enough. Argh!
Anyway, I hope that you find the blog interesting.
Scott, I love how DA adds so many options when clients get stuck with other frameworks. Thanks for the goodness you bring to the Agile space.
Snr Project Manager @ nib Group
8 年Hello Scott, Each enterprise and the environment in which they operate is different and complex , having knowing what tool to apply or framework / process that fits best and applying it to draw the best possible results makes it easier , but what I find lacking is someone who can easily maneuver around the complexity , think out of the box and apply the right tools and process . DAD doesn't have many consultant or trainers to advocate it .
Governance | Enterprise Portfolio Management | Transformation | Strategy | Enterprise Agility | Technology Modernisation
8 年Ah Scott good feedback. I think that's largely because people often think that because they are Movig to agile delivery then they can refuse to do any documentation, planning, design, etc- we are agile we do t do that! Which is rubbish . what they forget is that agile requires a far greater degree of disciple than other methods. If you can get that right first , learn shu level agile, then you can move away to be more lightweight. Learn then break away . So start with disciplined process then mix ideas to evolve...
Helping PayPal innovate for competitive advantage | Bridging their key business and technical initiatives to the best of IBM | Co-creation | AI | Automation | No-nonsense engineering to deploy valuable business solutions
8 年As Eistein would have said, as simple as possible but not simpler... Thank you for keeping educating the world.
Knowledge Graph enthusiast and CDMP Master
8 年Truth. Simple scrum leaves out so many aspects of delivering enterprise software. I appreciate DA's focus on choices and tradeoffs. "When you get into situations such as this you can go beyond the “but that isn’t agile” refrain to have coherent reasons that as to why one strategy is better for another strategy given the situation that you face.#