Presenters: Koen Van Exem & Martien van Knippenburg

Objectives:

Realize that we can increase throughput on Agile fixed price projects by using Dimensional Planning.

Intended audience:

This session is for people who

  • think that Agile and Fixed Price are contradiction in terms, but have an open mind
  • want to try fixe price with minimal risk
  • already did Agile Fixed Price but experienced overruns (time/budget)

Contents

Dimensional planning is planning technique that splits up requirements along functional and technical dimensions, we call them dirt, cobblestone and aphalted roads. Applying dimensions results in finer grained requirements, that eventually lead to more frequent feedback.

Contents

First we will demonstrate the current state of affairs by explaining 'Agile fixed price projects' as described in the two papers by Pascal Van Cauwenberghe.

Then we will briefly explain dimensional planning

  • the technique and the jargon
  • discussing functional and technical dimensions
  • compare it to other planning techniques (e.g. Critical Chain/buffering)

After that we will explain how to apply Dimensional Planning to 'Agile fixed price projects'

  • show how it differs from the former approach (e.g. allow change requests vs exchange requests)
  • show what the benefits are using dimensional planning

Finally we will demonstrate our approach on the 'GSE For Sale' project.

  • Pre Project Phase
  • Project Phase

The Pre Project Phase is inspired by Feature Drive Development (FDD).
We will briefly describe FDD, a very old, yet very unknown, Agile Method.

Format and length: 60 min presentation