A Comparison Of Disciplined Agile Delivery, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFE), And Scrum Methodologies In An Essay.

Disciplined Agile Delivery

Scaled Agile Framework

Scrum

 Roles

Roles

Roles

Disciplined Agile Delivery manages extension of Scrum by utilising Agile modelling, Extreme programming, Unified processes and various other methods.  

The primary roles of Discipline Agile Delivery include the activities by team lead, owners of products, team members and individual who manage architecture to fulfill the requirements and preferences of stakeholders (Brown, Ambler & Royce, 2013).

Specialist, individual tester, individual who possess relevant expertise of the domain, technical expert as well as an integrator, manages the secondary roles. The secondary roles help in gaining ideas about the products, operations and various iterations all throughout the lifecycle for delivery of products (Leffingwell, 2016). As the methodology acts as a free framework, so it supports several delivery life cycles to addressing the end to end delivery life cycle as well as implement proper governance strategies that were found missing from XP and Scrum.

The roles of Scaled Agile Framework are to improve the outcomes of system development by aligning the organisation towards the major business and technical goals and objectives. This would furthermore help in improving the economic outcomes by making proper decisions in business (deloitte.com, 2017). The roles also include organising teams to deliver value as well as prevent bureaucracy inherent within a traditional and hierarchical structure.

The Scaled Agile Framework also develops a good environment for organisations to enable collaboration, promote innovation procedures and make necessary improvements to derive positive outcomes.

The essential SAFE helps in providing a starting point to address the most critical components and furthermore define, develop and test various aspects from the backlog within a wide range of iterations (Larman & Vodde, 2013).  

The large solution SAFE allows the Agile trainers and suppliers to contribute largely and prepare a good organisational construct too.

The budgeting and governance procedures are major roles which can help the company to ensure that good amounts of return are achieved based on the investments made to accomplish the desired strategic objectives (Leffingwell et al., 2013).

The roles are managed by the product owner, scrum master and scrum team. The product owners gain the responsibility to manage their products properly while the master of scrum can act as leaders within the teams, who manage the sustainable development practices.

The product owner communicates the vision and priorities of a particular venture to the development teams. The scrum master has the roles of reducing chances of impediments, which can hinder the successful accomplishment of organisational goals and objectives (Eklund, Olsson & Strøm, 2014).  The scrum master also discusses with product owner about ways of enhancing the rate of return on investments. The roles of teams include software architecture development, testing, designing the user interface, etc (Laanti, 2014).

Disciplined Agile Delivery

Scaled Agile Framework

Scrum

 Processes

Processes

Processes

 This kind of methodology can fill in the process gaps as well as fulfill the needs and requirements of stakeholders. It also addresses the entire life cycle for delivery and initiation of the project. DAD manages various technical methods too such as Extreme Programming and prepares documentation, modelling and development of strategies related to corporate governance too (Lines & Ambler, 2012).  

 SAFE also allows for aligning the organisational goals and objectives, enable collaboration and deliver skillful and knowledgeable teams, which can make the company adapt to the needs and requirements of the business. To develop an extensive platform for enhancing the learning and knowledge acquisition approaches, the SAFE methodology describes the roles, responsibilities, artifacts, processes, benefits, usage that are needed to implement the Lean Agile development appropriately (Nguyen et al., 2013).

The system development outcomes have improved as the SAFE methodology has aligned the enterprise towards the technical and business objectives and even delivered normal schedule for letting the business plan be executed properly and quality of solutions get enhanced. This promotes continuous learning and prevents delays by maintaining a good hierarchical structure (Poort, 2014).  

Scrum methodology enables agile processes which can help to gain alternatives for managing a traditional project with ease and effectiveness. The agile processes can also allow the team members to respond to issues easily with the help of incremental, iterative and obtaining the empirical feedbacks (Papadopoulos, 2015). These kinds of processes can deliver alternative ways of achieving good outcomes as the waterfall or traditional sequential development models.  

Disciplined Agile Delivery

Scaled Agile Framework

Scrum

 Artifacts

Artifacts

Artifacts

The artifacts found at the agile team level include team backlog, team PSI objectives, Sprint goals, working software, spikes, metrics, etc.

 The artifacts of Scaled Agile Framework are present within the spanning palette and can be applied to the various teams, programs and portfolios for delivering the best solutions with much ease and convenience.

The artifacts are metrics, shared devices, CoP, milestones, roadmap, vision, system team, etc (Stettina & Hörz, 2015). The metrics are the primary ways of measuring the working solutions by defining some intermediates and furthermore use portfolios to measure progress.

The CoP or community of practice is a group consisting of team members who can act according to the organisation's mission for sharing knowledge and information in various domains (Ambler & Lines, 2012).

The system team is another artifact, which guides the development team to utilise the Agile development area properly and ensure integration, testing automation procedure and delivery process in a consistent manner.

Other artifacts include product roadmap, team backlog, metrics, etc.

The most essential artifacts of scrum are product backlog, sprint backlog and product increment.

The product backlog combines all the requirements of baseline to manage availability by the product owner to re scrum team. The owner of the product is found responsible for managing the validity and content of the artifacts.

The sprint backlog is a component of the product backlog that enables the team to work faster and manage proper testing, documentation and integration in an effective manner too (Ambler & Lines, 2012).

The product increment is the most important scrum artifact that enables the development team to produce products that can be shipped. The owners must align the product increment artifact with the goals of the development team so that the products are acceptable (Ambler & Lines, 2013).

Disciplined Agile Delivery

Scaled Agile Framework

Scrum

Benefits

Benefits

Benefits

DAD is a hybrid framework, and it is proved that it follows lean and agile approaches. The different phases of DAD follow milestones to focus on large-scale agile delivery in an effective way. The advantages also include strong technical architecture and focus on the concepts of engineering and furthermore ensure clarify the governance mechanisms to proper management of products and services delivery (Astromskis et al., 2013).

The artifacts of scaled agile framework consist of epic owners, enterprise architect, business owners, etc. The artifacts of SAFE are essential SAFE, Large solution SAFE, Portfolio SAFE and Full SAFE.

The essential SAFE is the basic artifact that acts as a configuration tool as well by proving a start point to implement the methodology. It also describes most of the important components for understanding the benefits of the framework with ease and effectiveness (Brenner & Wunder, 2015).

The large solution SAFE is another artifact that develops large and complex solutions to contribute to the Agile training members and suppliers. It also manages large sized and complex IT systems to develop independent systems.

The portfolio SAFE delivers a strategy and manages the investment funding for the people and resources. This also promotes lean governance along with guiding the members to develop programs to enhance the efficiency of portfolio execution (Brown, Ambler & Royce, 2013). It also enhances the ability to manage the proper flow of value streams and ensure proper budgeting procedures and governance techniques.  

The full SAFE helps in supporting the large and integrated solutions too.

The sprint backlog artifact helps the development team to perform to the potential at a faster rate to deliver shippable products and services. The alignment of product increment with the development team goals has further enhanced the quality of services and managed proper hierarchical structure (deloitte.com, 2017).

A scrum develops better features in sprints incrementally that allows the products to be available much earlier in the development cycle. The scrum helps in maintaining the good quality and enables transparency by involving the stakeholders and engaging the product owners too. It is also easier to identify risks and respond to those at the earlier stages of the development life cycle (Laanti, 2014).  

Disciplined Agile Delivery

Scaled Agile Framework

Scrum

Tools

Tools

Tools

The process oriented tools that can support the DAD are Microsoft TFS, Blueprint, Enterprise Transformation Advisor, IBM Rational method composer or RMC.

The Enterprise Transformation Advisor supports transitioning the modern practices within the organisation to the enterprise scale and enhance the innovative abilities to inspect, adapt and value the streams of governance in an effective way (Larman & Vodde, 2013).

Essential tools for managing SAFE include Kanban, Backlog, Lean UX, Agilefant, Roadmaps and PI objectives.

The most important tools used by Agile teams for scrum project management are user stories, scrum boards, sprint backlogs, burn down charts and velocity charts (Leffingwell, 2016).