Dimensional planning is an approach for fixed price projects that involves planning features across different axes like functionality and non-functionality. It aims to decrease risk through higher iteration counts and improve financial results by enabling higher ROI, lower initial investment, and earlier break even. Key aspects of dimensional planning include dimensional pull to guide development, defining alternate futures for groups of features, and recognizing that some "dirt road" non-core features will always be incremental while "cobblestone" and "asphalt" core features may be iterative or incremental.

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Dimensional Planning
On Fixed Price Projects

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Overview
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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
CRM
Finance
LOB X
LOB Y
CMS
Year 1
Dirt
Cobble
Cobble
Dirt
Year2
?
Asphalt ?
?
?
Dirt ?
Project
CRM
Finance
LOB X
LOB Y
CMS
Year 1
Cobble
Dirt
Dirt
Dirt
Dirt
Year2
Asphalt ?
?
?
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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 Accounting
Inventory, 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
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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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• [in]frastructure for the [in]dependent
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Agile Progam & Project Management
Systems Integration
Application Development
Sourcing
• Info at
– http://www.inxin.com
– email@inxin.com