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Dimensional Planning

On Fixed Price Projects

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Overview• Prerequisites• What is Dimensional Planning• Why Fixed Price• Why Dimensional Planning• Dimensional Pull (DIPU)• GseForSale Case (inxin approach)• Friends and Foes• The Case for the Dirt Road

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Prerequisites• Iterative vs Incremental• Feature composition

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Iterative vs Incremental• Incremental

• Iterative

Pictures © Jeff Patton

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Iterative• Disruptive (non-continuous)

Pictures © Alistair Cockburn

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Feature & Feature composition

• FDD (Major) Feature Sets• Story Clustering/Mapping …

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What is Dimensional Planning• Meet the Dimensions• Applied to Feature• Applied to a Feature Group

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Meet the Dimensions

Dirt road Cobblestone road Asphalt road

Pictures © Wikipedia

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Applied to a Feature• Across different axes

– Functional– Non-Functional

• Iterative – never incremental

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Applied to a Feature Group• Only across functional axe• Iterative

– mostly incremental, but not per se

We call them Alternate Futures

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Alternate Future

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Why Fixed Price• To calculate ROI

• We need– Cost – Duration

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Why Dimensional Planning

• Decreased Risk– Through higher iteration count

• Better financial results– Higher ROI– Less Initial Investment– Earlier Break Even

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Better Financial Results

• Higher ROI• Less Initial Investment• Earlier Break Even

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Dimensional Pull (DIPU)• Project Level• Program Level

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DIPU – Project Level• Single piece flow• Pulled by the customer

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DIPU – Progam Level• Alternate Futures• Pulled by the customer

Project Year 1 Year2CRM Dirt ?Finance Cobble Asphalt ?LOB X Cobble ?LOB Y Dirt ?CMS Dirt ?

Project Year 1 Year2CRM Cobble Asphalt ?Finance Dirt ?LOB X Dirt ?LOB Y Dirt ?CMS Dirt Cobble ?

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Rolling Wave Planning

Pictures © Source Unknown

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Gse Case• Pre Project Fase• Project Fase

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Pre Project Fase• 2/3 sessions with the customer• Deliver a Request for Proposal

– From XP• User Roles

– From FDD• Overall Object Model• A features list

– From Dimensional Planning• Feature Dimensions• Fixed Price

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Project Fase• Started out with Scrum

– 1 week iterations– Problems

• Even the weekly cycle of planning, releasing and reflection was too rigid

• Switched to Dimensional Pull (DIPU)– Steady flow of dimensioned features– Advantages

• Continuous delivery and feedback

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Friends and Foes• Friends

– Exchange Requests– Story Mapping

• Foes– Time-boxing

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Exchange Request• Requires familiarity with

– scope – team– Technology

• Consequences– Limited applicability– No change requests

http://www.nayima.be/html/fixedpriceprojects.pdf by P. Van Cauwenberghe

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User Story Mapping• 2 types of stories

– Activity Stories aggregate Task Stories

• Dimensions are only applied to Activities– Tasks are always incremental

http://www.agileproductdesign.com/downloads/patton_user_story_mapping.ppt

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Time-boxing• Parkinson’s Law

• Descoping

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The case for the Dirt Road• Throughput Accounting

– Inventory / Operating Expense / Throughput– cq. Systems Thinking

• Theory of Constraints– The capacity contraint resource

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Throughput AccountingInventory, Operating Expense & Throughput

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Theory of Constraints

• Capacity Constraint Resource– Cobblestone/Asphalt

• Non Capacity Constraint Resource– ALWAYS DIRT ROAD

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Credits• Van Gogh’s from Jeff Patton• Mona Lisa’s from Alistair Cockburn• Road Pictures from Wikipedia• Rolling wave from [unknown]

» Please mail to email@inxin.com for corrections or pointers

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inxin• [in]frastructure for the [in]dependent

– Agile Progam & Project Management– Systems Integration– Application Development– Sourcing

• Info at– http://www.inxin.com– email@inxin.com