Multi-Level Planning

For medium to large projects, the story-level planning described in Chapter 7 is too fine grained. In automotive development, for example, a parts explosion for an entire car contains thousands of small parts. Similarly, a large software application may contain thousands of stories. Although the development team needs to plan and deliver at a detail level, plans longer than 3 months are more effective at a higher level of granularity. Because plans change over time, constructing a story-level plan in two-week iterations for an 8 month plan (17 iterations) would be a waste of time. The plan needs to be granular enough to answer key questions, but detail plans offer only a false sense of certainty.

Figure 8-1 shows two product hierarchies, one for software and one for hardware. The number of levels used will depend on the size of the project (huge projects might need another level). A small, 3-month project could be planned entirely at the story level. However, a 200-person, 18-month project would need to be planned at several levels (business area, capability, and story, for example). In a customer relationship management (CRM) application project, the hierarchy might be business area (Sales), capability (a sales manager needs the ability to conduct Sales Profitability Analysis), and story (a sales manager needs the ability to generate a Territory Sales by Product Report). For an automobile project, the hierarchy might be platform (SUV Truck Body), group (Drivetrain), component (Transmission), and feature (Shift Lever).