The Disciplined Agile FLEX Engagement Pre-Planning Worksheet

Part of Disciplined Agile FLEX is an engagement pre-planning worksheet that helps you create an improvement backlog for an organization.

This page is in formation, but is being presented to facilitate conversations about this.

The Disciplined Agile FLEX Engagement Pre-Planning Worksheet

The DA FLEX Engagement Pre-Planning Worksheet takes several factors into account to provide a DA Value Stream Consultant a suggested improvement backlog. The core factors used are:

  1. An assessment for the three dozen potential improvement items in the full playbook which is used to identifying candidates for improvement
  2. The scope of what can be worked on based on the sponsorship level
  3. The order in which the improvements should be attempted based based on the theories of Flow and ToC. Identify those items which can be deferred
  4. Limit the backlog to those items that the company is ready for and are unlikely to resist
  5. A list of options for each of the suggested improvement actions

The DA FLEX Engagement Pre-Planning Worksheet not only provides a suggested playbook, it allows for overrides to enable further customization.

While no pre-planning worksheet, consider how other systems don’t even attempt this and provide little customization in objectives. Few options for each of these objectives are given.

Providing few choices does not make things simpler, it makes things not fit for purpose.

The DA FLEX Belief Sysetm

  • There are natural laws that directly affect knowledge work. Many of them are formulated in writings on Lean, Flow *ToC.
  • Systems thinking tells us to look at the relationships between the components of a system
  • Systems inform behavior. There are patterns of behavior that result from how companies are organized and do their work. We can use this knowledge to identify improvements to the organization
  • When improvements don’t get us the results we were going for, they often unobscure new relationships &help us better understand ones already seen
  • Full understanding of the system is not possible so we must have short improvement cycles to help guide us
  • People don’t inherently resist change as much as they resist imposed change.
  • People with control like to hold onto that control. There is a fear of losing it.
  • People will fear &resist change they don’t understand it &think it might make their lives harder.
  • There is a vicious cycle of believing that complexity means we can’t understand what’s happening. It sets up fear, which creates resistance. It has people look for simple solutions that they can believe in
  • Our focus must be on creating systems that enable people to get their job done in both an effective &humane way.