Agility: Responding to Change Without Losing Control
What this domain tests
Agility in DPMM® is the capacity to absorb change while remaining manageable. The exam tests whether you can identify where flexibility is legitimate, how short cycles and feedback loops reduce risk, and where agility stops and uncontrolled drift begins.
Core rules
- Agility is a property of the approach, not an excuse for absent control. The more uncertain the requirements, the shorter the planning horizon and the more frequent the feedback moments.
- Plan in cycles: a stable overall framework with rolling detail per phase or iteration. Detail is added as knowledge grows.
- Deliver in increments that can be reviewed, so users give feedback on something real rather than on a specification.
- Prioritise: when time or capacity is fixed, the conversation is about which requirements are essential, which are desirable and which can wait.
- Every change goes through impact assessment - time, cost, quality, risk - before acceptance.
- Close each cycle with reflection: what worked, what did not, what to change in the next cycle.
Worked example
A software project demonstrates a working prototype at the end of the second phase. Users report that the approval workflow is unusable in practice. Reasoning: the original requirement was written without user involvement, and the demo delivers that knowledge early. The project manager records the finding, assesses that reworking the workflow costs two weeks but avoids a probable rejection at acceptance, prioritises it above a reporting feature that no one has yet requested, and brings the trade-off to the decision point. Agility here is not “do what the user wants now”; it is “learn early, assess honestly, decide formally”.
Traps that cost marks
- Equating agility with skipping documentation, plans or decision points.
- Accepting every new wish in the name of flexibility, so the project loses its deadline.
- Only seeking feedback at final acceptance, when correction is expensive.
- Fixed prioritisation: treating all requirements as equally essential defeats agility entirely.