Disciplined Agile
by Tatsiana Balshakova,
Mark Lines, Mike Griffiths, Scott Ambler, Bjorn Gustafsson, Curtis Hibbs, James Trott
This blog contains details about various aspects of PMI's Disciplined Agile (DA) tool kit, including new and upcoming topics.
View Posts By:
Tatsiana Balshakova
Mark Lines
Mike Griffiths
Scott Ambler
Bjorn Gustafsson
Curtis Hibbs
James Trott
Past Contributors:
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Michael Richardson
Daniel Gagnon
Valentin Tudor Mocanu
Kashmir Birk
Glen Little
Klaus Boedker
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Requisite Agility applied in Project Management
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Date
Viewing Posts by Scott Ambler

On March 31st, 2022 we released Disciplined Agile (DA) v5.5. The focus of this release was to:
- Update several process blades:
- Portfolio Management. We added the Address Portfolio Risk decision point to capture strategies for aggregating and addressing risk at the portfolio level.
- Program Management. Added the Address Program Risk and Measure Program decision points which were previously options of Govern the Program. Address Program Risk is similar to Address Portfolio Risk, albeit at a different level, and Measure Program focuses on how to aggregate and work with metrics at the program level. We also refactored the Organize Teams decision point, pulling out a new Organize Program Leadership decision point to focus on those options and making Organize Teams an ordered list of strategies.
- Product Management. Added the Citizen Development option to the Evolve Vision decision point in our ongoing work to support the great work going on in the CD space.
- Vendor Management. Added the Intake Requests decision point to capture strategies to bring work into the VM team. We renamed the Choose Commercial Model decision point to Choose Contract Model to increase consistency within this blade.
- Update several process goals:
- Accelerate Value Delivery. We added the three new decision points: Optimize Team, Optimize Work, and Optimize Flow. As the names imply, they capture strategies to optimize how you have organized your team, your overall work strategy, and how to improve flow within your team and with teams that you collaborate with. These decision points capture great strategies for accelerate value delivery by your team.
- Align With Enterprise Direction. In recent releases of DA we've added significant support for metrics, and recently we realized that we haven't explicitly called out strategies to align your team's measurement strategy with areas of the organization that you are part of. As a result we added the Align Measurement Strategy decision point.
- Form Team. We renamed the Structure of Team strategy Internal Open Source to Innersource to reflect current naming conventions for that strategy.
- Add and update reference links to existing techniques. This is an ongoing effort and there is more to come.
- Update descriptions of techniques. It is also an ongoing effort to keep our material up to date.
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Posted
by
Scott Ambler
on: March 31, 2022 01:58 PM
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Comments (10)

I'm proud to say that the second edition of Choose Your WoW! is now available. It was released in early February and as you can see my physical copies arrived today, and they look great.
Choose Your WoW! is Concise
The focus of the second edition is to provide an overview of the DA tool kit, rather than the first edition which provides both an overview and detailed reference information. As you know we updated the reference material on a quarterly basis, as per our version control strategy, which meant the reference material contained in the first edition has gotten out of sync with the current material. To address this issue we have removed sections 2-5 from Choose Your WoW, which provided reference information for Inception, Construction, Transition, and Ongoing process goals respectively. This information is now captured on PMI.org, via a combination of the process goal overview pages and in the DA Browser.
In short, pun intended, the second edition is 125 pages where the first edition was 441 pages. As you can see in the picture below, the difference is clear.

Choose Your WoW! is Updated
We have also updated the overview material in the book to bring it into alignment with version 5.3 of the DA tool kit. The key changes that we made to the material are:
- Chapter 1: Added Figure 1.4, a screen shot from the DA Browser; Updated Figure 1.6 (Scope of DA diagram), to reflect the simplification of the Foundation layer.
- Chapter 2: Updated Figure 2.2 to reflect the updated scaling factors (we went from 6 to 7). Changes: We added the Skill Availability factor, renamed Technical Complexity to Solution Complexity, and made the choices on the vertices non-IT specific.
- Chapter 3: Figure 3.3 (process goals overview) updated to list the three new Ongoing process goals: Measure Outcomes, Organize Metrics, and Intake Work; Figure 3.6 (tactical scaling factors) updated to reflect the 7 tactical scaling factors.
- Chapter 4: No changes of note.
- Chapter 5: Figure 5.1 (process goal level of detail) updated to reflect the new scope of this book; Figure 5.2 (process goals overview) this is a repeat of Figure 3.3 above; Figure 5.5 is now a screen shot from the DA Browser rather than a text table; and Figure 5.6 added, a screen shot from the DA Browser showing how references work.
- Chapter 6: Figure 6.11 (MBI/MVP overview) updated to make the descriptions clearer; Figure 6.14 (choosing a lifecycle flowchart) simplified to reflect feedback from practitioners.
- Chapter 7: This is now an updated version Chapter 28 from the first edition.
- References: Reduced the number of references because many of them were specific to Sections 2-5 in the First edition. All of those references removed from the book appear in the DA Browser as references.
- Index: Reduced in size due to the removal of sections 2-5.
Choose Your WoW! is in Color
The first edition was in monochrome the second edition, as you can see in the picture below, is in color. Although my photo isn't the greatest, the color really is sharp.

How to Get Choose Your WoW! Second Edition
There are several ways that you can obtain a copy of the book:
- Free PDF. Like many PMI books, all current PMI members can download a personalized PDF of the book.
- From the PMI book store. At the PMI bookstore we are selling it for $19.95 US for either paper or EPUB format.
- From Amazon. The book will be available at the various Amazons throughout the world in the coming weeks.
All three options are linked to from the Choose Your WoW! book page.
Mark Lines, myself, and everyone at PMI hope that you find the book a valuable asset on your learning journey.
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Posted
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Scott Ambler
on: March 01, 2022 03:55 PM
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Comments (13)
 
We are often asked what the relationship is between Disciplined Agile (DA) and A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®Guide) 7th Edition (PMBoK7). We thought we would share our thoughts on the topic, presented as a frequently asked question (FAQ) list.
Q: Is PMBoK7 based on DA?
A: No, PMBoK7 was written independently of DA. Like DA, PMBoK7 is based on ideas and experiences from a wide range of people and sources so there’s clear overlap.
Q: How much coverage does DA include of PMBoK7?
A: A lot. As you can see in the DA Browser, techniques captured in both PMBoK7 and PMBoK6 are referenced extensively in DA. Having said that, we’re in the process of updating those references so that they point to the same topics in PMIstandards+, which is PMI’s digital version of our standards, guides, and how-to content.
Q: How much coverage does PMBoK7 include of DA?
A: It depends on how you look at it. Explicitly, very little. Implicitly, a fair bit. As we indicated earlier, there is a lot of overlap between what PMBoK7 covers and DA. Both capture known, effective, and practical strategies.
Q: Why doesn't PMBoK7 include more DA concepts, given that it was published after PMI purchased DA?
A: DA was purchased by PMI in August 2019 and PMBoK7 was published in June 2021. Given that PMBoK7 is an ANSI standard, the submitted version of PMBoK7 was pretty much finalized at the point that PMI acquired DA.
Q: How do the PMBoK7 principles map to the DA mindset?
The following table presents a mapping of the PMBoK7 principles to the principles, promises, and guidelines of the DA mindset. We intend to publish a detailed blog on this topic in the near future.
PMBoK7 Principle
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Disciplined Agile
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Be a diligent, respectful, and caring steward
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- Principle: Be awesome
- Principle: Enterprise awareness
- Promise: Create psychological safety and embrace diversity
- Guideline: Leverage and enhance organizational assets
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Create a collaborative team environment
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- Principle: Be awesome
- Promise: Keep workloads within capacity
- Guideline: Create effective environments that foster joy
- Guideline: Attend to relationships through the value stream
- Guideline: Create semi-autonomous, self-organizing teams
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Effectively engage with stakeholders
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- Principle: Delight customers
- Principle: Enterprise awareness
- Promise: Collaborate proactively
- Guideline: Apply design thinking
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Focus on value
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- Principle: Delight customers
- Principle: Organize around products/services
- Promise: Accelerate value realization
- Guideline: Apply design thinking
- Guideline: Attend to relationships through the value stream
- Guideline: Adopt measures to improve outcomes
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Recognize, evaluate, and respond to system interactions
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- Principle: Optimize flow
- Principle: Context counts
- Promise: Make all work and workflow visible
- Guideline: Attend to relationships through the value stream
- Guideline: Apply design thinking
- Guideline: Adopt measures to improve outcomes.
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Demonstrate leadership behaviors
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- Principle: Be awesome
- Principle: Be pragmatic
- Principle: Enterprise awareness
- Promise: Create psychological safety and embrace diversity
- Guideline: Attend to relationships
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Tailor based on context
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- Principle: Context counts
- Principle: Choice is good
- Promise: Improve continuously
- Guideline: Validate our learnings
- Guideline: Apply design thinking
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Build quality into processes and deliverables
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- Principle: Delight customers
- Principle: Be awesome
- Principle: Optimize flow
- Promise: Improve continuously
- Guideline: Adopt measures to improve outcomes
- Guideline: Leverage and enhance organizational assets
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Navigate complexity
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- Principle: Be pragmatic
- Principle: Organize around products/services
- Promise: Make all work and workflow visible
- Promise: Collaborate proactively
- Guideline: Attend to relationships through the value stream
- Guideline: Create semi-autonomous, self-organizing teams
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Optimize risk responses
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- Principle: Be pragmatic
- Principle: Enterprise awareness
- Principle: Delight customers
- Principle: Optimize flow
- Promise: Make all work and workflow visible
- Promise: Collaborate proactively
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Embrace adaptability and resiliency
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- Principle: Be pragmatic
- Principle: Enterprise Awareness
- Promise: Improve continuously
- Guideline: Adopt measures to improve outcomes.
- Guideline: Leverage and enhance organizational assets
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Enable change to achieve the envisioned future state
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- Principle: Context Counts
- Principle: Choice is good
- Principle: Enterprise awareness
- Promise: Improve continuously
- Promise: Collaborate proactively
- Guideline: Validate our learnings
- Guideline: Attend to relationships through the value stream
- Guideline: Change culture by improving the system
- Guideline: Adopt measures to improve outcomes
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Q: How do PMBoK7 and DA differ?
A: PMBoK7, and the supporting materials in PMIstandards+, is a deep dive into Project Management. DA’s scope is much broader in that it addresses enterprise agility, putting a wide range of strategies that include but go beyond project management into context. Where PMBoK7 is deep, DA is broad.
Q: Where can I learn more about DA?
A: The Disciplined Agile Hub on PMI.org is a great starting point, as are the Introduction to DA and the Disciplined Agile Tool Kit pages.
Q: Where can I learn more about PMBoK7?
A: You can access A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®Guide) 7th Edition here. As a PMI member you can download a personalized PDF free of charge.
Acknowledgements
I'd like to thank Mike Griffiths for his input that went into this blog.
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Posted
by
Scott Ambler
on: November 09, 2021 03:46 PM
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Comments (18)
One of the changes that we made in the DA 5.3 release on September 30th was to update our advice around managing backlogs. We had been using older terminology from when we first developed Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) and we had an out-of-date description of what was being advised in the Scrum community (they've adopted a more disciplined strategy in recent years). So we've acted and updated this aspect of the tool kit.
Recent Refactorings
There are three refactorings that are pertinent to our discussion:
- Introduction of the Intake Work process goal. In the DA 5.2 release of July 9th, 2021 we created a new process goal, Intake Work by refactoring it out of the existing Address Changing Stakeholder Needs process goal. The Intake Work process goal is depicted in Figure 1. The reasons for this refactoring was that Address Changing Stakeholder Needs wasn't cohesive in that it had two purposes, the first to explore the changing needs and the second to intake the work into the team.
- Introduction of the Manage Backlog decision point. For the 5.3 release we refactored further, and split the Manage Work Items decision point into two, creating the new Manage Backlog decision point. The reason for this refactoring was that the original decision point wasn't cohesive, it had two purposes, the first to capture strategies to manage backlogs and the second to manage/visualize work items.
- Update to Explore Scope. We updated Explore Scope's Choose a Backlog Management Strategy decision point to reflect the changes we made to Intake Work.
Figure 1. The Intake Work process goal.

Managing Backlogs
As you can see in Figure 1 there are four fundamental strategies for managing your backlog of work. These strategies are ordered, you know this because there is an arrow beside the list, indicating that the strategies towards the top of the list are generally more effective than the strategies towards the bottom. In order from most effective to least effective, these strategies are:
- Lean backlog. Lean backlogs are typically organized into four groupings: Potential work that the team may commit to; Committed work that the team will perform, which is typically sequenced into several classes of service; Work in process (WIP) that the team is currently performing; and completed work that is ready to move on to the next stage in your overall process. Lean backlogs are overviewed in Figure 2.
- Agile backlog. Work items are managed as an ordered list/stack. Higher-priority work items appear at the top of the list, are granular and captured in greater detail, and are sequenced. Lower-priority work appear towards the bottom of the list, lack detail, and are effectively in unsequenced priority buckets. In previous versions of DA we referred to this strategy as a Work Item List and it has always been our default recommendation for agile team. This strategy was an extension to Scrum's (at the time) product backlog which was a prioritized list of requirements, but over the years Scrum's approach has evolved into this more disciplined strategy. Agile backlogs are overviewed in Figure 3.
- Requirements (product) backlog. A unique, ranked stack of requirements that needs to be addressed. Requirements at the top of the list should be captured in greater detail than lower-priority requirements at the bottom of the list. In earlier versions of Scrum this was a prioritized list of functional/usage requirements, often captured as user stories. Some teams would include defects and some form of quality requirements (often captured as technical stories) on the backlog, as they were considered valid requirement types as well. Requirements backlogs are overviewed in Figure 4.
- Unsequenced backlog. All of the work is effectively the same priority, although sometimes there may be the concept of two priorities - what is in the current release and what needs to be in future releases.
Figure 2. Lean backlog overview.

Figure 3. Agile backlog overview.

Figure 4. Requirements (product) backlog overview.

Comparing Backlog Strategies
The following table compares the four backlog strategies. For more information, please refer PMI's Disciplined Agile (DA) Browser.
Table 1. Comparing Backlog Strategies
Backlog Strategy |
Advantages |
Disadvantages |
Lean |
- Best where priorities are changing continually.
- Easily supports several work sequencing schemes in parallel.
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- Harder to see the work as a single stack of sequenced work items if there are multiple classes of service.
- Requires discipline to pull new work fairly from the various classes of service. It's common to see one or more classes, such as paying down technical debt, starved in favor of implementing new functionality.
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Agile |
- Best suited where the team follows one of the agile life cycles.
- Clearly indicates the order in which work will be performed, enabling effective prioritization discussions with stakeholders.
- Supports the forecasting of cost and schedule estimates via techniques such as burndown or burnup charts.
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- Requires ongoing maintenance and refinement, adding overhead to your process.
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Requirements (product) |
- Clearly indicates the order in which work will be performed, enabling effective prioritization discussions with stakeholders.
- Supports the forecasting of cost and schedule estimates via techniques such as burndown or burnup charts.
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- Forecasts tend to be overly optimistic due to non-requirement work not being accurately taken into account.
- Requires ongoing maintenance and refinement, adding overhead to your process.
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Unsequenced |
- Enables the team to perform the work the the order they deem to be the most effective.
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- You don't know what's next to be worked on, making it more difficult to do look-ahead planning/refinement.
- Team members tend to work on what they want to, or what they find easy.
- By not working in priority order, when the team runs out of time or funding, they risk missing critical functionality because it needed to be cut.
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Acknowledgements
I'd like to thank Curtis Hibbs and Klaus Boedker for their great work on Figures 2-4, which I reused from our upcoming Disciplined Agile Product Owner workshop.
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Posted
by
Scott Ambler
on: October 04, 2021 12:03 PM
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Comments (16)
We released Disciplined Agile (DA) v5.3 earlier today, September 30th 2021. While there are several visible changes that we've made, discussed below, most of this release is "behind the scenes" in that we've updated descriptions of many techniques and added many new references that link to articles, blogs, or books describing a given technique.
The "visible changes" include updates to several process goals:
- Intake Work. We refactored out several options from the Manage Work Items decision point to introduce a new decision point, Manage Backlog. We also updated the options for backlog management to reflect current industry practice. This is a fairly important change that will be described in a detailed blog post.
- Explore Scope. We updated the Choose a Backlog Management Strategy decision point to reflect changes to Intake Work. Early in a project it's critical to identify how you will manage your backlog later during Construction as this decision will inform your decision around how much detail to gather during Inception.
- Measure Outcomes. We added several new potential metrics to existing options, and introduced the Increase Initiative Health decision point.
- Organize Metrics. Added Aggregate Measures and Report Measures decision points. An earlier blog, Apply Consistent Metrics Categories Across an Agile Portfolio, covers the key strategy for aggregating measures. The report measures decision point is self explanatory, covering strategies such as status reports, metrics reports, automated dashboards, and more.
- Plan The Release. Updated estimation strategies.
We also updated the following process blades:
- Continuous Improvement – Added the Analyze Root Cause decision point to the goal diagram.
- Product Management – Added the Measure Offering decision point to describe explicit measurement options. Added the Capture Roadmap decision point to describe options for documenting/communicating your product roadmap.
It is important to note that for the DASM and DASSM exams that we are still testing you against the DA 5.0 version of the model.
Related Resources
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Posted
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Scott Ambler
on: September 30, 2021 06:59 AM
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Comments (9)
Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you who you are.
- Houssaye
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