Disciplined Agile
Disciplined Agile expects many ways of working side by side, so aangine plans the whole portfolio DA describes (projects, programs, products and service teams) at the level of detail each one uses, and tests funding and priority decisions as scenarios.
Many ways of working
Disciplined Agile’s core advice is to choose your way of working (WoW) to fit your context. One team runs the Agile lifecycle, another Lean, a large effort runs the Program lifecycle, and somewhere a team still works in serial phases because that is right for now. It is a sensible, people-first stance. It also means the portfolio holds work planned in different ways, at different levels of detail.
The Portfolio Management process blade takes a broad view: the portfolio is every potential and existing initiative, including projects, programs, product teams, service teams and the operational work behind them. That is an honest definition. A product team isn’t free because its roadmap has a gap, and a service team handles tickets every day. Plan only the projects, and everything else shows up as unexpected overload.
Inception feels this directly. Align with Enterprise Direction asks whether an initiative fits the strategy; Secure Funding asks whether the organization can afford it, in money and in people, next to everything already committed. The business case shows what the initiative costs. It rarely shows what it displaces. And the temptation grows to standardize every WoW just so the portfolio report looks consistent.
How aangine works with DA
In DA terms, aangine supports the Portfolio Management blade and the funding and alignment decisions made in Inception. It does not choose your WoW or replace any lifecycle: teams keep theirs, and approved plans flow back to their tools.
Projects, programs, phases and products are portfolio items. Capacity is planned by team, role or skill, with operations and service management work counted next to project work in every period. Identifying, prioritizing, organizing and governing initiatives then happens with the full load in view.
Plan a phase for one team, a product for another and a program for a third, all in one plan. Plans move both ways with Jira, Azure DevOps, Rally, MS Project, Planview, OpenText PPM and spreadsheets, so no team changes tools to be counted.
A new initiative enters the plan with a type and total effort, linked to the priority and objectives it serves. One click replans the portfolio and shows which teams it loads, which initiatives move and which budget line runs short.
Set investment areas as strategic priorities, plan initiatives or minimum business increments (MBIs) as portfolio items with dependencies and fixed dates, and let your cost-of-delay ranking feed prioritization. Then replan against the real capacity of each value stream and shared team.
In practice
Inception is short by design. The funding conversation can stay just as light and still show what a new initiative would displace.
Add the initiative with its type and a total effort estimate. Data quality is an outcome of planning, not a prerequisite, so low maturity is no barrier.
Connect it to the strategic priority and objectives it serves, so Align with Enterprise Direction has an answer on the same screen.
Replan and see which teams it loads, which initiatives would move and which budget line runs short, across every lifecycle in the portfolio.
Turn the request into a clear choice: the extra capacity this initiative needs, or the work that moves to make room. Then decide.
How aangine works
aangine is the decision layer above the tools you already use. No rip & replace: it imports your plans, replans them in one click and pushes the approved plan back.
The result: faster, clearer decisions when it matters most.
What our customers report in their case studies. Read the customer results
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Disciplined Agile and DA are trademarks of the Project Management Institute, Inc. Framework and method names are used to identify them only. aangine and Continuous Software are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the owners of these frameworks and methods.
Book a demo
Book a demo and bring your mix of lifecycles, your service teams and the next initiative waiting in Inception. We’ll show your whole portfolio in one plan, with funding choices side by side.
