Disciplined Agile Foundations
What the domain tests
The Disciplined Agile Foundations domain checks that you understand DA as a process-decision toolkit. Questions ask you to distinguish the DA mindset from a fixed framework, name the DA principles, select an appropriate life cycle, and explain how choice points and process goals produce a context-specific way of working (WoW).
Core rules and concepts
- DA is not a method; it is a toolkit for choosing and tailoring practices.
- The DA mindset rests on principles including delight customers, be awesome, be pragmatic, context counts, be collaborative, choose your WoW, optimize flow, and organize around products/services.
- DA layers are Foundation (principles, people, flow, practices), Disciplined DevOps, value stream, and Disciplined Agile Enterprise.
- Life cycles are Agile, Lean, Continuous Delivery: Agile, Continuous Delivery: Lean, Exploratory, and Program.
- Choice points are decision points where a team selects among options; process goals describe what to achieve; process blades group practices by capability such as continuous integration or testing.
- Roles are primary or supporting and vary by life cycle.
Worked example
A team releases to production several times a day, needs automated testing, and serves a product with a steady flow of small features. Rather than defaulting to the Agile life cycle, the team selects Continuous Delivery: Agile. Reasoning: the Agile life cycle fits less frequent releases and a broader planning cadence; Continuous Delivery: Agile adds the engineering practices and deployment cadence for frequent releases. The choice is justified by context - release frequency, automation maturity, and customer demand - and recorded as a WoW decision.
Traps
- Treating DA as a single prescriptive process.
- Reciting principles but ignoring context counts when selecting a life cycle.
- Confusing process goals (what to achieve) with process blades (practice areas).
- Assuming roles are fixed across all life cycles.
- Choosing a life cycle because it is popular rather than because it fits the team's context.