How DSDM’s Role Help Companies Increase

Have you heard about a very popular Agile Methodology called DSDM? No? It is a tool that some software developers and programmers are familiar with.

But you can use DSDM as an active agile feature to develop software and look for increasing results.

DSDM is yet another agile software development approach that provides a methodology for building and keeping systems that meet tight time constraints through the use of incremental prototyping. In addition, DSDM Consortium maintains this method.

The amazing thing about all of this is that they are based on practice and seek to help projects with scopes that change over time. As there are many frameworks, it is possible to choose the one that best fits your reality.

In this article, you will find out what is DSDM and its role as an important Agile Methodology in project management and the business world.

What is DSDM?

Initially, the acronym DSDM comes from Dynamic Systems Development Method appears as an extension of RAD (Rapid Application Development). Its application can be in Systems projects with limited schedules and costs.

This method was developed in the UK in 1990,  to meet the need for quick business. However, it was officially originated in January 1994 by a non-profit group called the DSDM Consortium.

To share and combine their best techniques and experiences, an association of experts in the field of Software Engineering has come together to provide an industry-standard framework for project delivery.

It’s even an iterative and incremental approach that emphasizes ongoing customer/team involvement.

What sets DSDM apart is the active user involvement and decision-making power with the teams working on it.

Above all, DSDM points out the most common information failures in these projects, including cost reduction, missed deadlines, lack of user involvement, and monitoring by senior management.

DSDM was made to develop high-quality projects, even if they were limited by deadlines and budgets.

This group intended to create strong, fast, and responsive designs. In addition, one of DSDM’s focuses is to maintain a closer relationship between end-users and the development team.

DSDM Principles

In summary, DSDM has nine core principles revolving around business needs:

1. Active user involvement

The first and most important principle is user engagement. For instance, the user must be actively involved throughout the development of the project.

Thus it helps to reduce errors that can occur due to user perception and therefore also reduce the cost of rework.

DSDM emphasizes working with a small, select group of users and keeping in touch with them on an ongoing basis. In addition, it looks to make it rather than meeting them occasionally at periodic meetings and review sessions.

2. Qualified Teams

To proceed quickly and without problems, this model encourages and enables teams to make decisions. Therefore, below there are some areas where team decision making is very critical:

  • Requirement Decision
  • Prioritizing the delivery of activities and resources
  • Details of technical requirements
  • What functionality do you need to add to a given incremental

3. Frequent delivery

Frequent delivery of value to the customer ensures that bugs are identified, worked on, and resolved/reverted/fixed at an early stage.

So the source of the error and the root cause is also found and corrected.

In other words, it applies to all demands documents (user stories), working models, and program codes.

4. Business enhancement

The focus is on providing software that is efficient enough to address a business need and accept changes or improvements in a later iteration.

So DSDM focuses on satisfying business needs first and does not allow you to create software. Moreover,  it keeps the process flow simple and effective.

5. Incremental development

To keep the big project simple and less complicated, it becomes crucial to breaking it down into several small resource projects. Each delivery guarantees that a new feature is delivered to the customer.

In this sense, incremental development and delivery continue until delivery of the full set of features needed by the business.

6. Reversible changes

In DSDM, iteration takes place in small increments. As all stages of development are well known to developers, changes here are reversible.

Therefore, the fear of total job loss is also much less.

7. Baseline for requirements

Some high-level baselines need to be defined to limit the degree of freedom to make changes. Also, during the commercial contract phase, the business and development team discusses and agrees on the baseline when change orders and requirements would be stuck.

8. Integrated test

In DSDM, testing is performed early in the development phase to ensure that the product is technically flawless.

That is, developers and team leaders even check the test documents. Therefore, it helps in fixing problems at a very early stage and reduces rework and reduces cost and time.

9. Stakeholder collaboration

An atmosphere of trust and honesty is crucial to getting specific requirements and honest feedback on a resulting product.

In DSDM, business team and developer collaboration are very crucial to adding value.

Contributing clear business requirements and honest feedback aid in rapid development, which further leads to timely project delivery.

DSDM values

Individual

It looks at how Agile in DSDM values ​​people. In addition, these are the people who are physically working on the project and know the practical part best. Therefore, their experience and experience add more value to the project compared to tools, documents, or process flows.

Working software

There must be a shared understanding and a standard definition of  Working Software among all interested parties in the software.

Collaboration

It is one of the essential values ​​for effective delivery. Therefore,  it’s getting people into a room to make a decision will be more productive, and efficient than sharing emails for weeks to make a decision.

Changes Responses

It accepts all necessary modifications and accommodates them. In addition, it values ​​and responds to all changes in a very innovative way, mainly through prioritization.

What are the stages of a DSDM project?

The projects developed in DSDM have three different stages: pre-project, life cycle, and post-project.

Pre-Project

At this stage, you will identify candidate projects. In addition,  you can control budgets and contracts and this is the stage before the project development.

Life cycle

This stage has 5 parts that represent the course of the project’s development.

The parts are feasibility study, business study, functional model iteration, design and development iteration, implementation.

Post-Project

At this stage, the projects need some improvements and adjustments. Maintenance is an ongoing practice, repeated with each life cycle.

How does DSDM differ from other agile methods?

This method is an extremely advantageous methodology especially for dealing with issues that are generally of concern when adopting agile methods. Also, it requires fundamentals for the early steps of the project.

DSDM  also has a greater number of roles than you can expect in other methods. Thus, it is possible to adapt to diverse corporate environments without jeopardizing agility.

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