What do you think about DSDM's nine principles? Have you ever thought they need updating?
DSDM's nine principles have been a part of DSDM since 1997. Before this there were in fact 13 principles. It is now 2006 and as part of the review of DSDM a BIG question is being asked. Are the 9 principles sacred or do they need to be updated?
The reason the question is big is that by their very nature they are at the heart of the approach. If they do need updating we need to be sure that the change is worthwhile. So we would like to know what do you think.
The Current Principles
| Principle 1 | Active user involvement is imperative. |
| 2 | The team must be empowered to make decisions. |
| 3 | The focus is on frequent delivery of products. |
| 4 | Fitness for business purpose is the essential criterion for acceptance of deliverables. |
| 5 | Iterative and incremental development is necessary to converge on an accurate business solution. |
| 6 | All changes during development are reversible. |
| 7 | Requirements are baselined at a high level. |
| 8 | Testing is integrated throughout the life-cycle. |
| 9 | Collaboration and cooperation between all stakeholders is essential. |
Stephen Covey in his best selling book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" describes a Principle as a "natural law that should not be broken". The working group currently looking at the 9 Principles have made several initial observations. The first observation is that some of the Principles appear to be at different levels of importance to others. For example compare Principle 4 to Principle 6 - Principle 4 is totally fundamental to any DSDM project and looks to be far more significant than Principle 6 which is more a case of having good Configuration Management (CM) in place. Although CM is important it is more of a means to an end.
Another observation is that some of DSDM's Principles appear to overlap or be part of a more general principle: e.g. Principle 5 would appear to cover Principle 6; and Principle 1, 2 and 9 could be made into one principle such as "mixed teams empowered and working together". In fact is Principle 5 actually two principles? Both iterative and incremental are considered by many to be fundamental to successful software/product delivery.
What of the others? Is Principle 3 similar to Principle 5? - perhaps not as it focuses more on the need to be product focused, but is that clear - does everyone interpret it that way? Is Principle 7 like Principle 4 a huge concept completely fundamental to DSDM (potentially a unique selling point), i.e. the concept of gradually going down into the detail with subsequent baselines. Finally this leaves Principle 8 which is important but has time moved on? Perhaps it now goes without saying that you don't leave testing to the end.
One more thing - are there any Principles missing?
For example:
Plans evolve as you go into detail so don't be held hostage to your first guess
Resources should be fixed over the short term
Communication is more important than documentation
Quality is not a variable - don't reduce the quality of the final deliverable, just reduce the functionality (or "features")
This review is still in the early stages and we would love to hear what you think. So are DSDM's 9 Principles sacred or do they need updating? Please get in touch we would like to hear your views.
