Disciplined Agile Project Management for Adaptive Delivery Training Course

Course overview

Project managers increasingly lead work where requirements change, delivery teams use different ways of working, and governance still expects credible forecasts, controls, and decision records. A single prescriptive lifecycle can create unnecessary delay, while unstructured “agile” delivery can leave sponsors without visibility of scope, risk, funding, or dependencies. This course addresses the practical challenge of selecting and tailoring a fit-for-purpose approach across agile, lean, predictive, and hybrid delivery contexts using the Disciplined Agile toolkit.

Participants learn how to apply Disciplined Agile’s context-driven decision-making approach to project initiation, planning, team coordination, stakeholder engagement, risk management, metrics, and governance. They practise using process goal diagrams, choice criteria, WoW (Way of Working) selection, lifecycle options, and improvement backlogs to design an adaptive delivery approach. The course also develops the ability to align iterative delivery with portfolio controls, release planning, architecture concerns, compliance obligations, and business-value measurement.

Teaching combines instructor-led explanation with realistic project scenarios, facilitated design workshops, team critiques, and practical planning exercises. Participants work through a case involving a multi-team digital service with changing requirements and regulatory constraints. By the end of the week, each participant produces a Disciplined Agile delivery playbook: a tailored Way of Working, lifecycle rationale, governance cadence, metric set, risk response approach, and 90-day improvement plan that can be adapted for use on a live initiative.

The course is designed for experienced project and delivery professionals who already understand basic project management or agile concepts and now need a structured method for choosing, governing, and continuously improving how work is delivered.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Assess delivery context using Disciplined Agile choice criteria and select an appropriate lifecycle approach
• Design a tailored Way of Working using Disciplined Agile process goals and options
• Create an adaptive delivery charter that defines outcomes, stakeholders, constraints, assumptions, and governance needs
• Build release and iteration plans that connect business priorities, dependencies, capacity, and delivery milestones
• Apply risk-based governance practices that preserve autonomy while providing decision-ready reporting
• Select flow, value, quality, and predictability metrics for an adaptive project dashboard
• Facilitate a structured process-improvement backlog using retrospectives, experiments, and measurable hypotheses
• Produce a Disciplined Agile delivery playbook for applying the toolkit to a current or planned initiative

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Project Managers — who must adapt delivery controls without losing accountability for scope, risk, and outcomes
• Delivery Managers — who coordinate teams using different agile, hybrid, and predictive working practices
• Programme Managers — who need consistent governance and dependency management across multiple delivery approaches
• Scrum Masters — who want a broader toolkit for selecting practices beyond a single team framework
• PMO Managers — who are designing fit-for-purpose assurance, reporting, and lifecycle standards
• Business Analysts — who help teams shape requirements, stakeholder decisions, and value-focused delivery plans

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience contributing to or managing projects, product delivery, change initiatives, or operational improvement work. Familiarity with core project concepts such as scope, schedule, risks, stakeholders, milestones, and status reporting is assumed. Participants should also understand the basic purpose of agile practices such as backlogs, iterations, daily coordination, and retrospectives; prior Scrum certification is not required. Experience with Jira, Azure DevOps, or similar work-management tools is useful but not essential. This is not a programming course, and no specialist technical, architecture, financial-management, or Disciplined Agile certification is required.

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor-led briefings to introduce Disciplined Agile process goals, followed by hands-on application to a running delivery case. Participants compare lifecycle options, map stakeholder and governance needs, configure a Way of Working, and test planning choices against changing requirements and dependencies. Small-group workshops use Jira-style backlog data, metric examples, risk scenarios, and governance checkpoints. Facilitated peer review challenges each team’s design decisions. The final session converts the case learning into an individual application plan and delivery playbook for a workplace initiative.

Course outline

Day 1: Disciplined Agile foundations and delivery context

• Disciplined Agile mindset, principles, and context-driven decision making
• The DA toolkit and its relationship to agile, lean, predictive, and hybrid approaches
• Value streams, solution delivery, and enterprise awareness
• Disciplined Agile process goals and goal-driven practice selection
• Delivery context factors including team size, volatility, risk, and compliance
• Lifecycle options: agile, lean, continuous delivery, exploratory, and predictive lifecycles
• Stakeholder needs analysis for adaptive project governance

Workshop: Participants assess a project case using Disciplined Agile choice criteria and produce a delivery-context profile with an initial lifecycle recommendation.

Day 2: Designing a tailored Way of Working

• Creating a delivery charter focused on outcomes, constraints, and assumptions
• Tailoring the Inception, Construction, and Transition activities
• Selecting requirements practices for evolving and regulated environments
• Choosing work-item management approaches for backlogs, boards, and work-in-progress limits
• Defining roles, decision rights, and team coordination agreements
• Integrating architecture, security, quality, and operational concerns into delivery planning
• Documenting a Way of Working using process goal options and selection rationale

Workshop: Teams create a tailored Way of Working for the case project, including role definitions, workflow policies, practice choices, and documented trade-offs.

Day 3: Adaptive planning, coordination, and delivery control

• Outcome-based roadmaps and release planning techniques
• Capacity planning, throughput assumptions, and forecast ranges
• Dependency mapping across teams, suppliers, and shared services
• Iteration and flow-based planning for different delivery lifecycles
• Risk-driven prioritisation and contingency planning
• Managing scope change through options, hypotheses, and value trade-offs
• Using Jira and Azure DevOps views to support adaptive planning conversations

Workshop: Participants build a release plan and dependency map for the case, then revise both after receiving a simulated scope change and capacity constraint.

Day 4: Governance, metrics, and stakeholder confidence

• Fit-for-purpose governance versus compliance-driven ceremony
• Governance cadence, assurance checkpoints, and escalation design
• Decision logs, lightweight documentation, and audit evidence
• Flow metrics including cycle time, throughput, work in progress, and ageing work
• Value and outcome measures for sponsors and product stakeholders
• Quality, risk, and predictability indicators for delivery dashboards
• Stakeholder reporting that communicates uncertainty, options, and recommended actions

Workshop: Teams design a governance calendar and executive dashboard for the case project, producing a concise sponsor update based on realistic delivery data.

Day 5: Improving delivery systems and applying Disciplined Agile

• Retrospectives and improvement backlogs in Disciplined Agile environments
• Designing safe-to-fail experiments and measurable improvement hypotheses
• Root-cause analysis using fishbone diagrams and the five whys
• Improving workflow bottlenecks, handoffs, and team coordination
• Scaling considerations for multi-team and programme delivery
• Adopting Disciplined Agile within PMO, portfolio, and organisational constraints
• Building an individual Disciplined Agile delivery playbook and 90-day action plan

Workshop: Each participant completes and presents a Disciplined Agile delivery playbook for a workplace initiative, including tailored practices, metrics, governance, and a 90-day improvement backlog.

Tools & standards covered

PMI Disciplined Agile Toolkit, Jira Software, Azure DevOps, Miro

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions