VDD Implementation Playbook v1.0
How an organization moves from counting work in hours to working by VDD, step by step, with spreadsheets that make the whole path doable by hand. The Specification defines what a Delivery Brick is. The Playbook says who does what, in which order, with which template, and how you know a step is done.
Author: Alexander Lipanov · Owner and steward: Sofycod Sp. z o.o. · License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, with additional permissions
The path at a glance
Seven stages: you do the first six once, and the seventh becomes the rhythm of your delivery.
Stage
What you do
You end up with
1. Readiness
Score your data and your habits
A decision: ready, partly ready, or not yet
2. Toolkit
Copy the spreadsheet templates
An empty Brick Ledger, Rate Card, and Throughput & Forecast
3. Retrospective decomposition
Decompose completed projects into Bricks
A Ledger filled with Retrospective rows
4. Calibration
Run the seven-step calibration
A Price per Brick for every category
5. Pilot
Run Bricks and hours side by side
A pass or fail on three exit criteria
6. Training and rollout
Train every team, then move Customers in order
A team that counts, verifies and explains Bricks
7. Day to day
Count, verify, forecast, re-brick changes, recalibrate
Live prices and dates, and a calendar that keeps them honest
Effort, our estimate. 2 to 4 weeks of part-time work to a first calibration, then a pilot of 2 to 3 projects or 3 months.
Is your organization ready?
VDD is calibrated on your own history. The Playbook's readiness check scores your data and your delivery habits:
5 points or more
Ready. Start the toolkit and retrospective decomposition.
1 to 4 points
Partly ready. Close one specific gap first, then score again.
0 or below
Not yet. Collect more data and check your readiness again.
Buying software rather than building it? You don't calibrate. Ask each vendor to price the same project in Bricks and compare scope, not sales pitches.
The manual toolkit
Brick Ledger
One row per counted Brick: project, story, category, modifiers, who counted and who verified.
Rate Card
One row per category: the Base Unit Rate, its calibration date and sample, and the Price per Brick.
Throughput & Forecast
One row per sprint: verified Bricks, P50 and P85, and a delivery range per project.
Plus an Environment Setup checklist of 15 infrastructure actions, mapped to Google Cloud, AWS and Azure.
Readiness assessment, retrospective decomposition, the seven-step calibration, the pilot and its exit criteria, team training, the day-to-day rhythm, and the review calendar.
A worked example, counted, priced, and forecast end-to-end.
Glossary and checklists for every stage.
Two Excel workbooks that also open in Google Sheets: the blank template and the filled worked example.