Directly Capture Objectives is a discipline of effective collaboration in order to understand and visualize the next piece of work for your backlog. 

What is DCO?

Directly Capture Objectives (DCO) is the Pega Express™ way of collaborating from beginning to end. DCO encourages alignment between stakeholders and drives high-quality engagement between business and IT.  DCO is a discipline - a way of working that forms a continuous cycle of collaboration, iteration, and validation. DCO is supported by a variety of tools within Pega applications. A key principle of DCO is visualization, for example, business and IT people working together to model the final application, step-by-step, using Pega Platform™.

The picture below shows how the elements of DCO as a disciplined way of working operates continuously to constantly align business and IT expectations through frequent engagement seeking feedback on the delivery.

Why does DCO add value?

DCO encourages alignment between stakeholders from the start and provides the framework for ongoing structured high-quality engagement between business and IT. DCO reduces misunderstandings and minimizes the risk of discovering business or functionality gaps too far along in the development process. DCO also increases the overall pace of delivery by involving all key players from the very beginning. Using the visualization tools provided within Pega, DCO helps business stakeholders understand the application from an hands-on experiential perspective.  With this deep insight and understanding, the business stakeholders are empowered to provide high-quality feedback early and frequently during the application delivery cycle and keep the application aligned to the business outcomes.

When does DCO take place?

DCO is a continuous part of the Pega Express™ delivery approach and is relevant from the earliest stages of a project. At the start, DCO helps validate the structure and design of the Microjourneys^® that make up your Minimum Lovable Product (MLP). DCO continues to be essential during the building and testing of your application and drives the way of working on it, to support collaboration, iteration, and validation of the backlog and user stories. In short, DCO brings business teams closer to the solution, earlier in the build cycle.