- Context Counts-The Agile Scaling Model
- What Is the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) Process Framework?
- People First
- Learning Oriented
- Agile
- A Hybrid Process Framework
- IT Solutions over Software
- Goal-Driven Delivery Lifecycle
- Enterprise Aware
- Risk and Value Driven
- Scalable
- Concluding Thoughts
- Additional Resources
IT Solutions over Software
One aspect of adopting a DAD approach is to mature your focus from producing software to instead providing solutions that provide real business value to your stakeholders within the appropriate economic, cultural, and technical constraints. A fundamental observation is that as IT professionals we do far more than just develop software. Yes, software is clearly important, but in addressing the needs of our stakeholders we often provide new or upgraded hardware, change the business/operational processes that stakeholders follow, and even help change the organizational structure in which our stakeholders work.
This shift in focus requires your organization to address some of the biases that crept into the Agile Manifesto. The people who wrote the manifesto (which we fully endorse) were for the most part software developers, consultants, and in many cases both. It was natural that they focused on their software development strengths, but as the ten-year agile anniversary workshop (which Scott participated in) identified, the agile community needs to look beyond software development.
It’s also important to note that the focus of this book is on IT application development. The focus is not on product development, even though a tailored form of DAD is being applied for that within IBM, nor is it on systems engineering. For agile approaches to embedded software development or systems engineering we suggest you consider the IBM Harmony process framework.