I recently had an enlightening conversation with a knowledgeable colleague about Dual Track development in an agile context. I argued that not applying Dual Track development within a Scrum Team is, in fact, an anti-pattern.
What is Dual Track Development?
Let’s examine Dual Track development! This approach segregates work into two parallel tracks: Discovery and Delivery. It enables a team to concurrently discover user needs, validate hypotheses, and design solutions (Discovery track), while also developing, testing, and deploying code (Delivery track).
The primary benefits of this methodology include accelerated feedback loops, enhanced risk management, and more efficient prioritization of features. Essentially, the work done in the discovery phase directly informs and feeds into the subsequent sprint’s delivery efforts.
The Misconception
I observe implementations of Dual Track development where one team does the discovery and another team does the delivery. I think this is a misconception; Dual Track is actually a single track with discovery and delivery work entangled in the same iteration.
Why is this important? If one team does the discovery and another team does the delivery, there is significant risk that information is lost in the transition between the teams, and we miss the opportunity to remain agile and lose focus on adaptations.
How Does This Apply to Scrum?
A key aspect of the Scrum Team’s role is to understand the product’s users and determine their significant needs. These needs are then translated into hypotheses, which detail how these needs might be fulfilled, the expected outcomes, and impact.
The Scrum Team then devises strategies to validate these hypotheses with actual end-users, aiming to keep the feedback cycle as short as possible. It’s not uncommon for a Scrum Team to conduct several discovery and delivery cycles within a single sprint.
This underscores the importance of the Scrum Team being cross-functional and self-managing, enabling them to swiftly adapt without being hindered by dependencies.
The Opportunity
From my experience, if your Scrum Team is not merging discovery and delivery efforts within the same sprint, there exists a significant opportunity for the team to learn and evolve, thereby enhancing their capacity to generate impactful outcomes.
For educational purposes, however, I find the Dual Track development concept excellent for explaining what happens in great Scrum Teams.
Podcast Episode: We also delve into hypothesis validation in our podcast Noget for Noget – Episode 7.
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