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- _blankDSDM principles: A visual guideAbout
- _blankSimon BuehringBlog
- 19 Feb 2026 EXPLORE SUBJECTS
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Becoming a certified Scrum Master is not difficult
Becoming a certified Scrum Master is easy. Scrum Masters do not require the same in-depth industry knowledge as
project managers
as they’re not responsible for setting budgets, timeless and liaising with stakeholders.
Steppingstone
Becoming the role of
The 8 DSDM principles underpin the whole framework. Each principle must be adhered to by the project team, as ignoring any of the principles can increase the chance of project failure.
The graphic below was created to help you learn about DSDM. If you like it, please show your appreciation by linking back to this page.
Now, let’s find out more about the
DSDM principles
and how teams can ensure they stick to them.
The 8 DSDM principles
1. Focus on the business needDSDM has a strong business-driven approach. A
business case
must be established for the project and the team must understand project priorities. Every decision the team make during the project should help achieve the project goal and the team must ensure the project is delivered on time.MoSCoW prioritisationTo adhere to this principle, DSDM teams have several tools at their disposal. For example, the
MoSCoW technique
helps the team prioritise which of the business requirements
Must be,
Should be, C
ould be or
Won’t be delivered. Timeboxing helps to separate work into manageable chunks of time, with each chunk having its own deliverables and deadline.
The Foundation phase in DSDM also helps the team build focus. During this phase, team roles are established. The team then form the overall strategy, decide how risk/quality will be assessed, how technology will be used and how the project will be managed.
2. Deliver on time
Fixed time periods
DSDM is an agile framework that works plans work in fixed time periods (timeboxes), rather like sprints in
Agile Scrum
. The aim is to deliver a useable software product at the end of each timebox (iteration). DSDM is thus an incremental approach, as well as an iterative development approach to delivering software.DSDM places a strong emphasis on prompt delivery, proposing that even projects without any need for a fixed deadline still benefit from one. This is because having deadlines is the best way to control changing requirements. To stick to this principle, DSDM teams should focus on priorities, hit deadlines and manage their time by using the
MoSCoW and timeboxing techniques.
3. Collaborate
Team spirit and collaboration is highly important for DSDM teams. This is based on a rejection of having multiple departments that rarely interact. Teams should instead work as one unit and collaborate to encourage understanding, higher performance and shared ownership.Business and technical staff work togetherDSDM teams fulfil this principle by having business and technical staff together in the team, instead of separately. The team involve stakeholders throughout the project and ensure each team member feels empowered to make decisions. The team use ‘workshops’ to meet stakeholders and involve them in the project.
Ensuring collaborationThe visionary, ambassador and business advisor roles also ensure collaboration. The visionary conveys the sponsor’s needs to the team and ensures the business case objectives are achieved. Ambassadors communicate user’s needs to the development team, whilst business advisors assist with areas such as law or marketing. On a non-agile project, these roles would be performed outside of the project or would not exist at all.4. Never compromise qualityQuality is always fixed on DSDM projects and must be decided at the start. The final product shouldn’t be any more or any less than the quality decided upon.
Continuous testing
To adhere to this principle, DSDM teams must ensure quality doesn’t become a variable by testing continuously and reviewing constantly. This testing and reviewing occurs during the ‘exploration’ and ‘engineering’ iterative development phases. Testing should happen early in the project. Again, MoSCoW and timeboxing can be used to ensure testing is appropriate and organized.
5. Build incrementally from firm foundations
DSDM differs from other agile methods as it requires the foundations of the project to be agreed early. The foundations don’t need to be in too much detail – just agree on what the problem is and how to solve it. Once foundations are established, the solution must be delivered incrementally.Just enough design up front
To adhere to this principle, DSDM teams must ensure they perform analysis and ‘enough design up front’ (EDUF) at the start of the project. During each increment, the team must re-assess priorities and project viability, ensuring they have taken stakeholder feedback into consideration. Both the feasibility and foundation phases allow for establishing a foundation; the exploration and engineering phases allow for incremental delivery.
6. Develop iteratively
DSDM proposes that nothing is created perfectly first time and projects operate in a constantly changing world. Incremental delivery allows for such change to be embraced and leads to higher stakeholder satisfaction. Each iteration is combined with testing, demonstrations and feedback. This ensures that each iteration improves upon the last and leads to a decent final product.
Feedback loopDSDM teams can adhere to this principle by building feedback into each iteration. They must also be in the mindset that details should emerge later, not sooner, and they must embrace change. During each iteration, they should encourage creativity and experimentation, which will lead to learning and improvement. Constant review and feedback allow for change and progress to occur.To deliver an incremental working release of software at the end of each iteration DSDM recommends the
MoSCoW prioritisation
technique to prioritise requirements to be worked on by the team during a timebox. Requirements are typically capture in the form of user stories.
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