​Agile is a philosophy for delivering solutions that embraces and promotes evolutionary change throughout the life-cycle of a product. Many teams and organizations have been using Agile to, deliver software more timely, increase quality, and ultimately increase customer satisfaction. These planning levels were originally described by Hubert Smits in the whitepaper "5 Levels of Agile Planning: From Enterprise Product Vision to Team Stand-up".

1. The 5 Levels of Planning
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2. About Dimitri Ponomareff
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Dimitri Ponomareff (www.linkedin.com/in/dimka5) is a Coach.
Whether it's a sports team, software products or entire
organizations, Dimitri has that ability to relate and energize
people. He is consistently recognized as a very passionate and
successful change agent, with an overwhelming capacity to
motivate and mobilize teams on their path to continuous
improvements. He is a master facilitator, as well as a captivating
speaker with consistent, positive feedback regarding his ability to
engage an audience.
As a certified Coach, Project Manager and Facilitator of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People", Dimitri brings a full spectrum of knowledge in his delivery of methodologies. Through
teaching by example, he is able to build teams of people who understand where to focus their
work to generate the most value.
He has coached and provided tailor-made services and training for a multitude of organizations.
The short list includes, American Express, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, Morgan
Stanley, Best Western, Choice Hotels, JDA Software, LifeLock, First Solar, Infusionsoft
and Mayo Clinic. Dimitri enjoys his work, and does everything to ensure he shares his
knowledge with others who seek it.

3. The Agile Manifesto
We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.
Source: www.agilemanifesto.org
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4. Planning Process
Vision
Roadmap
R1 R2 R3 Rn
Release 1
SP1
Iteration 1
ST1 STnST3ST2
Iteration n
ST1 STnST3ST2
Story 1
T1 TnT3T2
Story n
T1 TnT3T2
SPnSP3SP2
Release n
SP1 SPnSP3SP2
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5. Let’s play Plinko...
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6. L1 - Vision
●Communication
●Elevator Pitch
●Voices of Why, What and How
●PDCA
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7. Project Management is all about communication
People who want IT must communicate
with people who can build IT.
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8. Elevator Pitch
FOR (target customer)
WHO (statement of the need or opportunity)
THE (product name)
IS A (product category)
THAT (key benefit, compelling reason to buy)
UNLIKE (primary competitive alternative)
OUR PRODUCT (statement of primary differentiation)
Source: Geoffrey Moore’s template from Crossing the Chasm
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9. Why, What & How
●WHY are we doing this?
Voice of the stakeholder (Stakeholders)
●WHAT needs to be done?
Voice of the user (Product Owner, Subject Matter Expert)
●HOW do we build it?
Voice of the developer (Scrum Team)
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10. PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Act
ACT
PLAN DO
PDCA
Cycle
CHECK
Continuous Improvements
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11. L2 - Roadmap
●What is a Roadmap
●External Facing Roadmap
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12. Roadmap
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● a roadmap is a planned future,
laid out in broad strokes
● intentions for the future given
what we know and believe
today - they are not
commitments
● should be formulated by first
understanding the target users,
the market, and the underlying
technologies
● a good product roadmap should
invariably deliver the right
products with the right features at
the right time to the right
customers

13. Client Facing Roadmap
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14. L3-L5 Levels of planning
Release Plan (months)
Iteration Plan (weeks)
Daily Plan (days)
Product
Backlog
Sprint
Backlog
Stories
Tasks
ActivitiesActivitiesActivities
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15. L3 - Release Planning
●Product, Epics & Stories
●Feature Driven Development (FDD)
●Feature Breakdown Structure (FBS)
●Parking Lot Charts
●Stories and Acceptance Criteria
●Estimation
●Release Burndown
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16. Product, Epics & Stories
Story Story Story
Story Story Story
Story Story Story
Story Story Story
Story Story Story
Story Story Story
Product
Epics
Stories
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17. Feature Driven Development (FDD)
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18. Alternative to Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Activity
Functionality
Analysis Design Coding Testing
Feature Feature Feature Module Module Module
WBS or traditional projects
Functionality
Activity
Story Story Story Story
Analysis Design Coding
Feature Breakdown Structure
Testing
Define the project plan in terms of what will be delivered rather
than what work steps will be performed.
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19. Parking Lot Charts
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20. Story form
As a < role >
I can < activity >
so that < business value >
● Role - represents who is performing the action. It should be a single person,
not a department. It may be a system if that is what is initiating the activity.
● Activity – represents the action to be performed by the system.
● Business Value – represents the value to the business. Why is this story
important?
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21. Acceptance criteria
● like stories it's written in simple language
● define the conditions of success/satisfaction
● provide clear story boundaries
● remove ambiguity by forcing the team to think through how a
feature or piece of functionality will work from the user’s perspective
● checklist or template of things to consider for each story
○ list of impacted modules and/or documents
○ specific user tasks, business process or functions
● establish the basis for acceptance testing
○ steps to test the story (given-when-then scenarios)
○ type of testing (manual vs. automated)
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22. The Cone of Uncertainty
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23. Estimation tools: T-shirts, Points & Hours
Cone of Uncertainty
13853210 20 ?
Hours
XS S
XLLM
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24. Release planning
● Overall context and prioritization for a specific period of time
● Product Owner
○ Creates a goal for the release
○ Selects a number of user stories from the product backlog
○ Works with the team to decompose and estimate the user stories
● The outcome of the release planning process is
○ Release Data Sheet
○ Release Backlog
○ Release Burndown Chart
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25. L4 - Iteration Planning
●Iteration planning ceremony
●Iteration Burndown
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26. Iteration Planning Ceremony
● Team selects stories from the product backlog they can commit
to completing
● Sprint backlog is created
○ Tasks are identified and each is estimated in hours
○ Tasks and estimates are done collaboratively
● High-level design is considered
As a vacation planner,
I can see photos of
the hotels, so that ...
8 points
Tasks Hours
Code the middle tier 8
Code the user interface 4
Write test fixtures 4
Code the foo class 6
Update performance tests 4
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27. Iteration Burndown
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28. L5 - Daily Stand Up
●Plan your day...
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29. Daily Planning
Parameters
● Daily
● 15-minutes
● Stand-up
● Not for problem solving
Three questions for each scrum team member
1. What did you do yesterday?
2. What will you do today?
3. Is anything in your way?
These are not status for the Agile Project Manager, they are commitments in
front of your peers
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30. Big Picture
●Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
●Agile Testing Framework (ATF)
●The 5 Levels of Planning in Agile
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31. www.torak.com
SAFe

32. © Torak, Inc. www.torak.com
Agile, Kanban & DevOps Coaching
Learn more at www.torak.com
Learn more at www.AgileTestingFramework.com
Learn more at www.kanbanzone.com

33. Thank You
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34. Resources and References
● www.scrum.org
● www.scrumalliance.org
● www.scaledagileframework.com
● www.mountaingoatsoftware.com
● www.agiletestingframework.com
● The 5 Levels of Planning: From Enterprise Product Vision to Team Stand-up
by Hubert Smits
● Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
● Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber
● Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
● Agile Software Development Ecosystems by Jim Highsmith
● Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle
● Scrum and The Enterprise by Ken Schwaber
● User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn
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35. This presentation was inspired by the work of many people and we have done our very best to
attribute all authors of texts and images, and recognize any copyrights. If you think that
anything in this presentation should be changed, added or removed, please contact us.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
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