The Kaizen feedback loop is a fundamental concept for continuous improvement within the Disciplined Agile framework. It is directly represented by the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle, also known as the Deming or Shewhart cycle. This iterative, four-stage model provides a scientific method for improvement. A team Plans a change or experiment, Does (implements) the change on a small scale, Studies the results and data to learn from the experiment, and then Acts on the findings to either standardize the improvement or begin a new cycle. This structured loop ensures that improvements are evidence-based and incremental.

A. Plan, Do, Monitor. Study: "Monitor" is not a distinct, standard phase in the PDSA cycle; monitoring is part of the "Study" (or "Check") phase.

B. Plat. Implement Demo. Study: This option contains non-standard terms ("Plat," "Implement," "Demo") and does not represent the established PDSA cycle.

D. Study. Act. React, Demo: This sequence is out of order and includes terms ("React," "Demo") that are not part of the formal Kaizen/PDSA loop.

1. Ambler, S. & Lines, M. (2020). Choose Your WoW!: A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 31, Figure 2.7: This figure explicitly depicts the "Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)" process as a loop with the four stages: Plan, Do, Study, and Act. The accompanying text states, "The continuous improvement process is depicted as a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) loop..."

Page 121: In the discussion of the "Measure Outcomes" process goal, the text notes, "A very common strategy is to follow a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle... This is a classic strategy for implementing a continuous improvement or Kaizen mindset."

Disciplined Agile (DA) categorizes team roles into two types: primary and supporting. Primary roles are essential for the team's day-to-day function throughout the initiative. Supporting roles, however, are engaged on an as-needed, often temporary, basis to provide specific skills or expertise that the core team lacks. A Specialist, such as a security expert or database administrator, is a classic example of a supporting role, brought in to address particular challenges or tasks before disengaging.

A. Team Lead: This is a primary role, responsible for facilitating the team, removing impediments, and ensuring the DA process is followed.

B. Architecture Owner: This is a primary role that owns the architecture decisions and guides the team on technical and design strategies.

C. Stakeholder: This is a primary role representing the individuals for whom the solution is being built and who will be affected by it.

1. Ambler, S. & Lines, M. (2019). Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 38, Table 3.1 "The Roles on a Disciplined Agile Team": This table explicitly lists "Specialist" under the "Supporting Roles" category. It lists "Team Lead," "Architecture Owner," and "Stakeholder" under the "Primary Roles" category.

Page 47, Section "Supporting Roles": This section details the nature of supporting roles, stating, "The supporting roles are played on a temporary, as-needed basis... A specialist is someone with a specific skillset that is required by the team for a short period of time."

The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework organizes the delivery of a solution into three distinct, goal-driven phases. The Inception phase focuses on envisioning the product, securing agreement on scope, and initial planning. The Construction phase is where the team incrementally builds a potentially consumable solution through a series of iterations or a lean, continuous flow. Finally, the Transition phase ensures the solution is successfully deployed into production and that stakeholders are prepared to receive and operate it. These phases provide a structured yet flexible approach to agile delivery.

A. Commencement, Creation, and Evolution are generic terms and not the specific, official names for the phases within the DAD framework.

B. While "Initiation" is a common project management term, it and the other terms are not the defined phases of the DAD delivery life cycle.

C. Introduction, Substance, and Alteration are descriptive but do not represent the formal terminology used in the Disciplined Agile toolkit.

1. Ambler, S., & Lines, M. (2019). Choose Your WoW!: A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute. Chapter 3, "The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) Process Framework," specifically Figure 3.1 and the section "The Phases of a DAD Delivery Lifecycle," pp. 38-40, explicitly detail the Inception, Construction, and Transition phases.

2. Project Management Institute. (2017). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Sixth Edition. Agile Practice Guide, Section 5.2.3.2, p. 98. While not the primary DAD text, the Agile Practice Guide, co-developed with the Agile Alliance, references DAD's phased approach, noting its structure which includes Inception, Construction, and Transition to support enterprise-level agility.

The Disciplined Agile (DA) toolkit emphasizes pragmatism and the principle of "Start Where You Are." The team's context is the primary driver for selecting a lifecycle. In this scenario, the team's lack of an agile mindset and their explicit desire for infrequent releases (every six months) are the dominant factors. While rapidly changing requirements suggest an adaptive approach, forcing an Agile or Lean lifecycle on an unwilling and unprepared team would be counterproductive and likely lead to failure. The DA toolkit includes a Traditional (also called Serial) lifecycle specifically for situations where it is the most appropriate fit for the team's current skills, culture, and context.

A. Program: A Program lifecycle is designed to coordinate a "team of teams" working on a large, integrated solution, not for a single project team as described.

B. Lean: The Lean lifecycle is an agile approach focused on continuous flow and delivering value as quickly as possible, which directly contradicts the team's preference for infrequent releases.

D. Agile: The Agile lifecycle is iterative and requires an agile mindset to deliver value in short cycles (sprints), which is misaligned with the team's stated culture and release cadence.

1. Ambler, S. W., & Lines, M. (2020). Choose Your WoW!: A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 60, Section 4.5, The Serial/Traditional Lifecycle: This section explicitly states, "It is also a good option for teams that are not yet skilled in agile or lean techniques or for teams that are organizationally unable to adopt these more modern ways of working." This directly supports choosing the Traditional lifecycle based on the team's lack of an agile mindset.

Page 38, Chapter 3, Choosing the Right Lifecycle: The text emphasizes that context counts and that the choice of lifecycle depends on the situation the team faces. The team's skills and culture are key contextual factors.

Page 61, Section 4.6, The Program Lifecycle: This section defines the Program lifecycle as being for a "team of teams," making it inappropriate for the single team in the scenario.

The retrospective is a cornerstone agile ceremony focused on continuous improvement, or Kaizen. Its primary purpose is to provide a dedicated, structured time for the team to reflect on its processes, interactions, and tools from the most recent work cycle. By discussing what went well, what challenges arose, and what could be done differently, the team collaboratively identifies actionable improvements. This allows them to inspect their own way of working (WoW) and adapt it for future iterations, thereby enhancing effectiveness, collaboration, and overall performance. The focus is explicitly on improving the process and team dynamics, not the product itself.

B. This describes backlog refinement (or grooming), which is a separate activity focused on organizing and clarifying items in the product backlog.

C. This is fundamentally incorrect. Agile principles encourage continuous feedback from stakeholders, and retrospectives are typically internal team events.

D. While the Product Owner is part of the team and participates, the event's purpose is active improvement by everyone, not passive observation by a single role.

1. Ambler, S. W., & Lines, M. (2020). Choose Your WoW!: A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 110, Section 6.3.6, "Improve the Process": The text explicitly states, "The goal of a retrospective, also called a reflection, is for the team to identify potential improvements to their way of working (WoW)." This directly supports the idea that the focus is on how the team can work better together.

2. Project Management Institute. (2017). Agile Practice Guide.

Page 50, Section 5.2.5, "Retrospectives": "At the end of each iteration, the team reflects on its own performance... The retrospective is a meeting for the team to reflect on the iteration and identify and agree on process improvements." This confirms the ceremony's role is for the team to improve its own processes moving forward.

In Disciplined Agile (DA), as in most agile frameworks, iteration planning is a distinct event that occurs at the beginning of each iteration. During this ceremony, the development team collaborates with the Product Owner to select (or "pull") a set of high-priority work items from the top of the product backlog (work item list). The team then creates a plan for how they will accomplish this work within the iteration's timebox. This just-in-time planning approach ensures the team has a clear, actionable plan for the immediate work ahead while maintaining flexibility for the overall project.

A. Retrospective meetings are held at the end of an iteration to reflect on and improve the team's process and way of working, not to plan upcoming work.

B. Iteration reviews are for demonstrating the completed work to stakeholders and gathering feedback, which informs future backlog prioritization, but it is not the planning event itself.

D. While the Product Owner prioritizes the backlog to optimize value, the iteration plan is created collaboratively by the entire team, not solely by the Product Owner.

1. Ambler, S. & Lines, M. (2019). Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 49, Figure 3.5, "The Agile Lifecycle: A Scrum-Based Project Lifecycle": This diagram explicitly shows "Iteration Planning" as the first activity within each Construction Iteration.

Page 101, "Plan the Iteration" Process Goal: The text states, "At the beginning of a construction iteration, the team needs to create a plan for what they will be working on during that iteration." One of the primary options listed for this goal is to "Pull work items from the top of the work item list."

2. Project Management Institute. (2021). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Seventh Edition and The Standard for Project Management.

Appendix X3, "An Introduction to Agile," Section X3.3.1, "Scrum": This section, which describes a foundational framework for DA's agile lifecycle, states, "The Sprint begins with Sprint Planning, an event to select Product Backlog items for the Sprint and to create a plan to deliver them." This reinforces the concept of planning at the start of an iteration by pulling from the backlog.

The Product Backlog (often called a Work Item List in Disciplined Agile) is the single, authoritative source for all work that the team needs to do. It is a dynamic, ordered list of features, functions, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that constitute the changes to be made to the product in future releases. The Product Owner is responsible for managing this backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering, ensuring it reflects the most valuable work for the team to tackle next. All work flowing to the team originates from this comprehensive artifact.

A. Business backlog: This is not a standard Disciplined Agile term. The Product Backlog is the correct artifact that contains all work items, including those driven by business needs.

C. Release roadmap: This is a high-level, strategic artifact that visualizes the product's direction over time, not a detailed, itemized list of all work.

D. Iteration backlog: This is a subset of the Product Backlog, containing only the specific work items selected for completion during a single, current iteration.

1. Ambler, S., & Lines, M. (2020). Choose Your WoW!: A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 229, Section "Work Item Management": "The work item list, also called a product backlog or just a backlog, is the source of work for the team." This statement directly confirms that the product backlog is the artifact that collects all work for the team.

Page 230, Section "Iteration Planning": It is explained that the iteration backlog is created by pulling items from the overall work item list (product backlog) for the current iteration, confirming it is only a subset of the total work.

Page 233, Section "Release Planning": A roadmap is described as a high-level plan, distinguishing it from the detailed work item list.

In Disciplined Agile (DA), teams are self-organizing and empowered. During iteration planning, the Product Owner presents the prioritized backlog of work. However, it is the responsibility of the entire delivery team to determine how much of that work they can realistically commit to completing within the iteration. This decision is based on their collective understanding of their current capacity, historical performance (velocity), and the complexity of the prioritized items. The team "pulls" work from the backlog into the iteration plan, rather than having work "pushed" onto them. This fosters ownership, accountability, and a sustainable pace.

A. The product owner prioritizes the work ("what") but does not dictate the amount; the team determines its own capacity and commitment.

B. The quality tester is a member of the team, and their capacity is a factor, but they do not make this decision for the entire team.

C. The team lead acts as a servant leader and facilitator, not a manager who dictates the team's workload or commitments.

1. Ambler, S. W., & Lines, M. (2019). Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 101, "Plan the Iteration" section: "The team decides how much work to bring into the iteration. They do this by considering their velocity... and the relative size of the work items at the top of the work item list."

Page 40, "Principle: Empowered Teams": "DA teams are self-organizing in that they determine their own way of working (WoW)... They own their process and they are accountable for their results."

2. Project Management Institute. (2017). Agile Practice Guide.

Section 5.2.4, "Iteration Planning": "The team determines its capacity for the iteration... The team pulls the number of stories from the top of the backlog that they forecast they can complete in the iteration." This principle is foundational to the DA toolkit.

A value stream map (VSM) is a fundamental Lean tool used to visualize the end-to-end flow of work required to deliver value to a customer. Its primary purpose is to make the entire process, including both value-adding and non-value-adding activities (waste), visible. By mapping the current state, the team can systematically analyze the flow and identify constraints, bottlenecks, delays, and other forms of waste. This identification of "problem areas" is the critical first step that enables the team to design a more efficient future state with minimized waste, thereby optimizing the whole value stream.

B. A VSM is holistic; it analyzes the entire value stream from concept to delivery, not just a single phase like construction.

C. Reducing delays is a specific outcome of using a VSM, but its broader function is to identify all types of waste and problem areas, of which delays are just one type.

D. The Five Whys is a separate root cause analysis technique. While it can be applied to problems identified on a VSM, the map's function is identification, not the application of a specific analysis method.

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1. Ambler, S. W., & Lines, M. (2019). Choose Your WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 278: In the "Measure Improvement" section of the Continuous Improvement process blade, "Value Stream Mapping" is listed as a technique. The description states, "The team creates a value stream map for their process to identify potential process improvements." This directly supports that VSMs are used to find problem areas.

Page 31: Discussing the Lean principle "Optimize the Whole," the text emphasizes understanding the entire value stream to make improvements, which is the foundational concept behind VSM.

2. Project Management Institute. (2017). The Agile Practice Guide.

Section 5.2.5, Value Stream Mapping: "Value stream mapping is a lean manufacturing technique used to document, analyze, and improve the flow of information or materials required to produce a product or service for a customer... The team begins by creating a value stream map of the current process to identify waste and bottlenecks." This confirms the primary role is identification of problem areas (waste, bottlenecks).

In the Disciplined Agile (DA) toolkit, tactical scaling factors are used to understand a team's context and help them tailor their Way of Working (WoW). Team Size is a fundamental factor, as communication and coordination strategies must adapt as a team grows. Domain Complexity refers to the complexity of the problem space; a more complex domain requires more sophisticated requirements, architecture, and testing practices. Both are two of the six primary tactical scaling factors that DA teams use to guide their process decisions.

A. Demographics: This is too general. While team skills and experience are important, "demographics" is not a defined tactical scaling factor in the Disciplined Agile framework.

B. Best Practices: These are potential outcomes or process choices a team might adopt after analyzing scaling factors, not an input factor for the analysis itself.

E. Budget: Budget is an enterprise-level constraint that influences the project, but it is not considered one of the core tactical scaling factors for tailoring a team's internal process.

F. Dynamics: Team dynamics describe the internal health and collaboration of a team. While crucial to manage, they are not a primary scaling factor for choosing a process framework.

1. Ambler, S. W., & Lines, M. (2019). Choose Your WoW!: A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute. In Chapter 3, "Choose Your Way of Working (WoW)," the six tactical scaling factors are presented in a spider chart (Figure 3.2, p. 36). Team Size and Domain Complexity are explicitly listed and detailed as two of these six factors.

2. Project Management Institute. (2021). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Seventh Edition. The principle of "Tailor based on context" (Section 2.8, p. 47) directly supports the use of scaling factors like team size and complexity to adapt the delivery approach, which is a core concept of Disciplined Agile.

3. Project Management Institute. (n.d.). Introduction to Disciplined Agile. PMI.org. The official PMI online resources for Disciplined Agile consistently list the six tactical scaling factors, which include Team Size and Domain Complexity, as the primary contextual elements for tailoring a team's approach.