NCPMI Agile Community of Practice >>Disciplined Agile

In late 2019, the Disciplined Agile (DA) Consortium joined the Project Management Institute, along with FLEX, the innovative agile method for value stream mapping across complex business processes.  Acquiring Disciplined Agile Consortium’s team and FLEX brought widely respected adaptive framework experts, authors and agile evangelists into PMI leadership.  Scott Ambler, Mark Lines, Alan Shalloway and other DA leaders are now PMI’s agile experts, who lead adaptive project management and training standards development for global PMI community members. 

The Agile Manifesto was published in 2001 by an innovative group of IT experts seeking to bring best practices like Lean process, Kanban, and quality improvement from 20th century advanced industrial manufacturing into software development for use by 21st century digital technology project teams.  Those 17 visionaries met for a few days in Utah, created 4 values and 12 principles commonly shared by their ‘lightweight’ and ‘flexible’ development processes, and agreed the name ‘agile’ (proposed by the late Mike Beedle) was the best title to unify their efforts.  Manifesto signer Martin Fowler observed in 2018 that an ever expanding “Agile Industrial Complex” has continuously grown from their initiative to align similar iterative, adaptive IT process frameworks under a common umbrella. 

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February 2021 marked the 20th anniversary celebration of the famous gathering of 17 thought leaders at Utah’s Snowbird Ski Resort, from which AGILE has become a huge thing in modern business!

Today, 42 global training organizations offer 270 certifications in some form of ‘agile’ product development, including PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner!  Created in 2011, PMI-ACP is as professionally rigorous as PMP, and quickly became the fastest growing project team certification offered by PMI.   Outside PMI however, there is a very large agile community where ACP remains little known, and not appreciated for high level agile team professional knowledge that far exceed the training provided in 260 other agile “certifications” whose skill requirements are much easier to complete!  Among dozens of agile approaches, Scrum has become by far most popular.  A Scrum Master, the team leader or ‘rugby quarterback’ in the scrum framework, is similar to (but not same as) an agile project manager.  

In 2021 PMI agile now includes ACP in a five step Disciplined Agile Certification Journey that guides members from beginner- DA Scrum Master (DASM) leading teams, to expert- DA Value Stream Consultant (DAVSC) in enterprise portfolio coaching to maximize business agility!  

Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) originated inside IBM Corporation 15 years ago as the first agile process framework tailored so that many IBM development teams could optimize project workflow using agile at scale together in a large enterprise.  After IBM Press published DAD (1st edition) book in 2012, DAD’s authors founded the DA Consortium to take DAD/DA quickly across the world as a leading innovative process set for how agile ways of working can be successfully implemented by ANY large corporation, medium enterprise, or small project team in all industry sectors, who wish to deliver products quickly and optimize their business agility.  In the last decade, DA has become a superior practice guide to scaling agile across enterprises, but is much less well known than the popular Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

The word “disciplined” was added early in IBM’s agile implementation to allay a common incorrect concern by corporate executives that agile delivery permits teams too much self-organization and structural freedom on decision making to successfully produce quality products in a large organization.   Also, DAD lifecycles schedule agile iterations within 3 project phases that are very familiar to traditional PMOs (Inception, Construction, Transition). 

PMI Disciplined Agile combined with FLEX is a goal-driven, pragmatic, agnostic TOOL KIT that harnesses hundreds of collaborative agile framework best practices from Scrum, Scaled Agile, XP, Lean, Kanban, TQM, etc, to systematically guide teams on how to find the best way of working for ALL levels of an organization in ANY industry.   As a goal-driven systems approach to implement agile options and tailor adaptive best practices, DA is a flexible guide to achieving a solid foundation for business agility that truly is ‘pragmatic not purist’.  By using DA, people, teams, and organizations can all benefit from straightforward agile guidance to ‘Choose Your Way of Working’, streamline process flows, improve quality, and implement lean practices that quickly realize optimum productivity and business value.

VIDEO: DA co-founders Scott Amber and Mark Lines talk about “What is PMI Disciplined Agile?

VIDEO:  PMI Disciplined Agile Case Study Success Stories  from Franklin Templeton Investments, Papa John’s Pizza, Panera Bread, and Insurance Corporation of British Columbia!

CERTIFICATION:  PMI’s 2021 Disciplined Agile Certification Journey aligns PMI agile training in 5 levels from beginner to experienced expert!    DASM > PMI-ACP > DASSM > DAC > DAVSC

PMI DA training provides a five step progressive path to agile mastery!   PMI Agile Certifications (chart)

YOUR Next Steps?  LEARN about Disciplined Agile; CRAFT a 30 second “DA elevator speech;” be READY to promote the business value of PMI DA to your professional colleagues!  Use PMI’s FREE guides:

PMI Choose Your WoW!  DA “BOK” Body of Knowledge book (FREE pdf downloads for PMI members)

PMI 2021 Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide 7th Edition, (now 50% agile skills)

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PMI North Carolina Chapter Agile Community of Practice DISCIPLINED AGILE CHAMPIONS below are your local DA coaches.  Please bookmark this page and CONTACT NCPMI’s Agile CoP team to help advise you and your organization begin to implement DA!

derek ketterer

Derek Ketterer
NCPMI Chair Agile CoP

derek ketterer

John Leonard
DA Champion

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