The book Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) describes a process framework which can be used to define the processes needed for your enterprise. It recognizes that Agile methods, like Scrum and XP, do not cover all activities that are needed in an enterprise to deliver solution; their focus is mainly on the development activities. Additional activities are needed for Agile to have a full and effective delivery lifecycle.
A Hybrid Approach
Disciplined Agile Delivery is a hybrid approach, which includes practices from several agile methods. If you are familiar with RUP or the Unified Process, then you will also recognize a lot of the practices provided in the book. The framework described in the book is extensive, and can be overwhelming to some readers; nevertheless the practices described are valuable and indeed necessary in many organizations.
Although the book describes alternative practices, I liked to see more information in the book about the “why” of the practices that are provided. Understanding why a practice works and the principles that it is based upon motivates and empowers professionals to try a practice and to self-organize their processes and adopt them to their needs.
Governance
The authors claim that “Agile teams are significantly easier to govern than traditional teams” and “Traditional approaches to governance are guaranteed to harm agile teams”. I fully agree with that. Agile teams can be managed and governed by motivating and enabling them to do their work professionally, and measure and steer the results that they deliver. There are actually very few additional governance mechanisms needed. Agile methods have shown to be compatible with models like the CMMI, and Scrum can be used to assure compliance to quality standards like ISO 9001:2008 and IEC 62304.
Conclusions
This book provides practices to deliver software solutions, thereby extending Agile methods with supporting activities for large software development organizations.
Note: There is also a Full Book Review of Disciplined Agile Delivery. This review has also been published on DZone.
