We released Disciplined Agile (DA) v5.3 earlier today, September 30th 2021.  While there are several visible changes that we’ve made, discussed below, most of this release is “behind the scenes” in that we’ve updated descriptions of many techniques and added many new references that link to articles, blogs, or books describing a given technique.

The “visible changes” include updates to several process goals:

• Intake Work. We refactored out several options from the Manage Work Items decision point to introduce a new decision point, Manage Backlog. We also updated the options for backlog management to reflect current industry practice. This is a fairly important change that will be described in a detailed blog post.
• Explore Scope. We updated the Choose a Backlog Management Strategy decision point to reflect changes to Intake Work. Early in a project it’s critical to identify how you will manage your backlog later during Construction as this decision will inform your decision around how much detail to gather during Inception.
• Measure Outcomes. We added several new potential metrics to existing options, and introduced the Increase Initiative Health decision point.
• Organize Metrics. Added Aggregate Measures and Report Measures decision points. An earlier blog, Apply Consistent Metrics Categories Across an Agile Portfolio, covers the key strategy for aggregating measures.  The report measures decision point is self-explanatory, covering strategies such as status reports, metrics reports, automated dashboards, and more.
• Plan The Release. Updated estimation strategies.

We also updated the following process blades:

• Continuous Improvement – Added the Analyze Root Cause decision point to the goal diagram.
• Product Management – Added the Measure Offering decision point to describe explicit measurement options. Added the Capture Roadmap decision point to describe options for documenting/communicating your product roadmap.

It is important to note that for the DASM and DASSM exams that we are still testing you against the DA 5.0 version of the model.