DSDM

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DSDM

• Presented by
• Vijaya L Uppala
• 09/30/2003

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DSDM

• Dynamic Systems Development Method
• A project delivery framework that truly serves
  the need of the business.

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DSDM Projects

• Deliver on time
• To budget
• Dont cut important corners
• Results from practical experience

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DSDM Describes

• Project management
• Estimating
• Prototyping
• Time boxing
• Configuration management
• Testing
• Quality assurance
• Roles and responsibilities (of both users and IT
  Staff)
• Team structures
• Tool environments
• Risk management
• Building for maintainability
• Reuse and vendor/purchaser relationships

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PRINCE2

• It is a project management method that was
  specifically designed to be generic
• and independent of any particular project type or
  development method.

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Elements of DSDM PRINCE2 their Overlap.
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Using DSDM with PRINCE2

• DSDM itself includes some project management
  content. It was consciously designed to provide
  just sufficient capability to allow effective
  management of DSDM projects. However, it is
  recognized that some businesses may choose to use
  a PRINCE2 framework to manage all their projects,
  including those using DSDM.

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Principles of DSDM

• Active user involvement is imperative.
• DSDM teams must be empowered to make decisions.
• The focus is on frequent delivery of products.
• Fitness for business purpose is the essential
  criterion for acceptance of deliverables.
• Iterative and incremental development is
  necessary to converge on an accurate business
  solution.
• All changes during development are reversible.
• Requirements are base lined at a high level.
• Testing is integrated throughout the lifecycle.
• A collaborative and co-operative approach
  between all stakeholders is essential.

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Project Structure

• Starting
• Has a major control point after an initial
  understanding of the project has been gained
  point at which a decision to proceed must be
  confirmed, and the option of abandoning project
  must be considered
• End of the Business Study (with Business Area
  Definition, System Architecture Definition, and
  Outline Prototyping Plan)
• Also has an earlier, less critical, control point
  that is sometimes omitted
• The Feasibility Study (Products Feasibility
  Report, optional Feasibility Prototype, Outline
  Plan)

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Project Structure

• Running
• A management stage may consist of a number of
  DSDM timeboxes. The number of stages required
  should be determined by balancing the amount of
  management control needed over the project and
  its risks against the potential overhead of
  managing stage boundaries.
• A stage might be mapped
• To a phase (if all the functional model iteration
  is done before all the design and build
  iteration), or
• To the development of a functional area (where
  the functional model iteration and the design and
  build iteration are done in alternation).
• DSDM Implementation is either simply a part of
  the increment (where this is treated as a single
  stage) or may be treated as one or more stages in
  its own right.

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Project Structure

• Stopping
• The project review in DSDM is done in each
  increment
• The key is tailoring the methods to do what is
  needed and no more, since in DSDM incremental
  acceptance has already taken place.
• During early adoption of DSDM, the probability of
  and need for lessons learned information is
  heightened.

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Roles Responsibilities

• In any project, someone has to take
  responsibility for the following
• Defining the business requirement
• Providing the budget
• Providing the user and development resource
• Authorizing change
• Defining standards and acceptance criteria
• Managing the project to a successful conclusion
• Signing off project deliverables
• DSDM supports a project management structure in
  which there is a
• many to many relationship between the
  individual and the role, and there is a direct
  correspondence between many of the roles they
  each define. It emphasizes the importance of
  senior management commitment throughout the life
  of the project.

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Roles Responsibilities

• Project Board
• The Project Board is not specifically required
  by DSDM, but it sits comfortably within the DSDM
  project framework. The Project Board consists of
  two roles
• Executive
• Senior User

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Roles Responsibilities

• Executive
• DSDM Executive Sponsor is accountable for the
  project to corporate and / or program management.
  Throughout the project, the Executive owns the
  business case.

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Roles Responsibilities

• Senior User
• The Senior User is responsible for committing
  user resource to the project. DSDM warns that
  lack of a clearly defined user group poses a risk
  to the project.

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Roles Responsibilities

• Project Manager (PM)
• The Project Manager is responsible for the
  successful delivery of the agreed products, to
  the agreed standard of quality, on time and
  within budget, and capable of delivering the
  benefits stated in the PID. The Project Manager
  may come from IT or the user community, and
  reports to the Project Board.
• DSDM adds a complementary emphasis on
• Empowering the project team
• Protecting the project team from outside
  interference
• Ensuring that the team can remain stable and
  focused throughout the project
• Managing user involvement in the project and
  ensuring users continue to be available when
  needed.

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Roles Responsibilities

• Team Manager
• This individual is responsible for ensuring
  that the development team meets its objectives by
  delivering the required system.

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Roles Responsibilities

• Project Support
• An organization may establish a Project
• support Office to provide administrative
  support to the Project Manager, either because of
  the volume of work or to assist in the use of
  particular tools in the project (for example
  project management or configuration management
  tools). This could include providing the scribe
  and facilitator roles required by DSDM projects.

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Roles Responsibilities

• Project Assurance
• In DSDM projects, the Project Assurance Team may
  be redundant because of the far closer
  relationship and involvement of the business and
  users and the increased visibility offered by
  frequent deliverables. DSDM projects are often
  carried out to a fixed budget and decisions are
  always based on the business benefit. The project
  assurance needs in DSDM projects can be
  effectively fulfilled by the Ambassador User and
  Technical Coordinator.

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Roles Responsibilities

• Project Assurance
• The Technical Coordinator is outside the core
  team. He or she is responsible for ensuring that
  the project is technically sound, meets its
  technical specification, and meets the agreed
  technical standards for the project itself and
  the organization as a whole.
• Ambassador User and possibly the Technical
  Coordinator are members of the core team, they
  should have direct access to the board if their
  assurance activities tell them that the Project
  Manager is steering the project away from the
  brief it has been given by the board.
• The important thing is to provide to the Project
  Board confidence that the project is indeed
  progressing well that there are no hidden
  problems and that it will deliver a product that
  is fit for business purpose at the agreed time.

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Products

• Most products within DSDM are specialist
  products. That is, they either contain
  information related to the system or development
  the project is to deliver or define the
  prototyping techniques and methods to be used.
  There are, however, some DSDM products that are
  either completely management products or contain
  project management sections (such as the outline
  plan and outline prototyping plan) and some DSDM
  quality products (such as review records and test
  records).

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Products

• Project Initiation Document
• It may contain the management aspects of the
  business study if the study is conducted at this
  time
• The PID should also address any DSDM specific
  management issues. For instance, the following
  should be included in the PID
• Preliminary indication of areas within scope
  which may be desirable but not essential
• The need for team empowerment
• Facilities that the development team will need
• Any safety-related or product liability issues
• Define tailoring of approach for the project
• Suitability Filter

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Products

• Feasibility Report
• This DSDM report will not be produced
  separately, but will be included in the Project
  Initiation Document.

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Products

• Business Area Definition (including Prioritized
  Requirements List)
• This is a DSDM document that covers both
  specialist and management aspects.
• Outline Prototyping Plan, PID, and Stage Plan
• The Outline Prototyping Plan is produced in the
  Business Study in DSDM to define the main
  prototyping phases within the project
• Development Risk Analysis Report
• Project Review Document

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Management and Control

• The purpose is to enable each level of the
  project management team to
• Demonstrate to the next level up that the project
  is on track to a successful outcome, (that the
  project will deliver products that are fit for
  business purpose on time and within budget)
• Identify early anything that may prevent this

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Tolerance Empowerment

• Tolerance is defined as the measure of deviation
  that may be managed by the project manager before
  the project board must be consulted that is, how
  far schedules can slip, budgets be overspent, or
  changes to scope appear before the project owners
  need to intervene.
• DSDM acknowledges that the project team must be
  empowered in order to work efficiently. A project
  will lose momentum if every minor change to
  functionality, budget or schedule needs external
  approval. Effective teams are entrusted to make
  decisions within the defined level of tolerance
  without reference to outside authority, allowing
  progress to be made more quickly.
• Tolerance may be set on any measurable project
  attribute. Common examples are cost,
  functionality, and time.
• In DSDM projects, therefore, tolerance is on
  scope, rather than on time and resource (as in
  most traditional projects).
• DSDM Feasibility and Business Studies are
  generally timeboxed. Scope tolerance in these
  phases is normally managed by limiting the depth
  to which the studies proceed, so that it is just
  sufficient to produce results that are fit for
  business purpose.

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Change Management

• In a DSDM project, change within the high level
  scope and requirements defined in the Business
  Study is expected. Exception reporting will only
  be needed where change is beyond this tolerance.

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Quality

• Quality is based on pre-determined quality
  criteria, formulated to ensure conformance to
  User Requirements (fitness for purpose) both for
  the project and for each product the project
  delivers.
• Promotes the review of products against their
  quality criteria.
• Recommends assurance activities to ensure the
  appropriate quality standards are being followed.
  DSDM requires that all reviews and assurance
  activities add value to the process and are not
  for documentations own sake (introducing
  unnecessary delays).
• It also points out that, although the review
  processes for products are similar, there are
  probably fewer products than in traditional
  projects.

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Risk

• The DSDM Development Risk Analysis Report
• It is developed in an ongoing fashion and
  reported specifically at the end of the
  Functional Model Iteration.
• Identifying relevant risks and planning how to
  address them is an important part of planning for
  each timebox in DSDM.

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Conclusion

• In a nutshell, the Dynamic System Development
  Method (DSDM) is a game-changing, non-proprietary
  agile application development project model for
  developing business solutions within tight
  timeframes. It shortens the clock-speed (and time
  to market) for delivery of core business
  benefits. DSDM is the only approach that can
  guarantee delivery on an exact day under tight,
  Internet-time deadlines. It's tool-independent
  there are no tools or software packages to buy
  (or be hamstrung by).
• DSDM is not magic. Experienced project managers
  see it as a systematic strategy of common sense.
  Few ideas in DSDM are new best practices are
  synergistically built into the model. As a
  result, people are applying DSDM to projects in a
  wide range of fields, in and outside of
  Information Technology. Recent trends are to
  combine DSDM PRINCE2 or with XP (Extreme
  Programming), to gain the benefits of DSDM's
  project management framework and business focus
  with XP's high efficiency and high quality
  development practices, what we like to call
  Enterprise XP or EXP (a term coined by Mike
  Griffiths of Quadrus).