Principle: Build Incrementally from Firm Foundations

This is one of the eight principles of DSDM, supporting its philosophy, and used in its process, roles and responsibilities, and products.

There are two main points in this principle:

• Build/deliver incrementally.
• Use a firm foundation when doing so.

Incremental delivery

Think of this wiki: I’m only writing the most important things right now, and I don’t add all the possible details. The pages at the time of this writing will be my first increment of the wiki. Later on (especially if there’s enough interest from the audience), I will add more details to the existing records, or even more records. Those will form my next increments.

A predictive project usually starts working on every aspect of the project, and delivers it once. Agile projects use incremental delivery, which allows them to receive feedback and use that for future increments. For the example of this wiki, if I see that not many people are reading about the principles and the most popular records are those about the process, I will focus on those pages in the next iterations instead of spending my time on adding more details to the principles’ records.

The firm foundation

DSDM is different from some other Agile systems such as Scrum, where the project may start without any initial planning. The DSDM process has a phase called foundations where it creates a high-level plan for the project. That works as a firm foundation for our increments: the one mentioned in this principle.

Written by Nader K. Rad

This is (and will be) a work in progress: More details will be added in the future, depending on the feedback.

This wiki is developed and managed by an accredited trainer, independent of Agile Business Consortium and APMG. While aligned with their guidelines, it’s not an official resource.