Which method extends the Kaizen loop strategy to help teams identify techniques that are likely to work in their context?

Guided Continuous Improvement (GCI) is a fundamental concept in the Disciplined Agile (DA) toolkit that enhances the traditional Kaizen (Plan-Do-Study-Act) loop. Instead of relying on unstructured experimentation, GCI provides teams with a framework of process goals, decision points, and a curated list of proven techniques with their associated trade-offs. This guidance helps teams make more informed choices about which new practices are likely to succeed in their specific context, thereby accelerating and focusing their improvement efforts. It extends the Kaizen strategy by providing a "guardrail" of options rather than leaving teams to discover them on their own.

A. Explicit workflow policies: This is a core practice of Kanban used to make process rules visible, not a method for identifying new techniques to try.

C. Communities of practice: These are groups for sharing knowledge and can be a source of ideas for improvement, but they are not the structured method itself.

D. Cross-team learning: This is a valuable activity for sharing experiences but lacks the structured, context-sensitive guidance that defines GCI.

1. Ambler, S., & Lines, M. (2019). Choose Your WoW!: A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Project Management Institute.

Page 32, Section "Guided Continuous Improvement": "DA provides light-weight guidance to help you choose the techniques that are most likely to work for you in your context. We call this guided continuous improvement (GCI)." This section explicitly contrasts GCI with the traditional Kaizen approach, highlighting how DA's guidance extends it.

Page 23, Principle "Choice is Good": This principle underpins GCI, stating, "Different contexts require different strategies... DA provides you with choices and helps you to make better choices."