Skip to main content

Avoiding Time-Wasting Pitfalls in Agile Estimation


If you do Scrum at work, you might be very familiar to the estimation in Planning 1. My PO has once complained to my team that why it took too long for estimating just a story. Wasting time results in the planning timebox is violated.


I give you some advice from my experience:

Estimation is estimation, not measure.

When you read some requirements, you see some risks but you actually don't know how complicated it will be.  Don't try to influence the others by explaining how to do it in too detail. Just keep in mind that you know the business domain pertaining to customer needs and estimate how much effort you will spend for it. The effort should be compared to your baseline one that you use for a simple requirement.

The bottom line is we do "relative estimation", not absolute estimation. For example, you are asked to estimate the height of a building. Basically, you just need to answer "how many times higher is the build than your height"; you don't have to give a accurate number.

Don't waste time for convincing the estimation points these are nearly the same.

Playing planning poker in Planning 1 somehow is interesting, but you should be careful. In many cases, you need to explain why your number is different from the other members (the largest number or the smallest one). If the different is very much (for example, between 3 and 8), the worth explanation is necessary. However, most of members have the same number excepting few members, the team don't need to force them to prove why they choose this number. For instance, there are 7 members in your team. Only two members choose 5 points and the rest of members choose 8 points; then your team just goes with 8 points. The exception case is only when the person has a strong concern and she wants to clarify it.

The main point is that you don't need to influence other members by proving how difficult to implement the requirements; these points should be discussed in Planning 2. What a waste of time if the team discusses too much about how to do the use story in Planning 1.

References:

[1]. http://www.slideshare.net/ScrumBreakfastVietnam/hcm-scrum-breakfast-agile-estimation-story-points
[2]. https://www.meetup.com/Scrum-Breakfast-Vietnam-Agile-and-Scrum-Meetup/events/233057237/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

[Snippet] CSS - Child element overlap parent

I searched from somewhere and found that a lot of people says a basic concept for implementing this feature looks like below: HTML code: <div id="parent">  <div id="child">  </div> </div> And, CSS: #parent{   position: relative;   overflow:hidden; } #child{   position: absolute;   top: -1;   right: -1px; } However, I had a lot of grand-parents in my case and the above code didn't work. Therefore, I needed an alternative. I presumed that my app uses Boostrap and AngularJs, maybe some CSS from them affects mine. I didn't know exactly the problem, but I believed when all CSS is loaded into my browser, I could completely handle it. www.tom-collinson.com I tried to create an example to investigated this problem by Fiddle . Accidentally, I just changed: position: parent; to position: static; for one of parents -> the problem is solved. Look at my code: <div class="modal-body dn-placeholder-parent-positi...

Coders are NERDS | Learning English with Podcast

Let's learn three English vocabulary words based on real-life context through a humorous video about the life of software coders, especially at big tech companies when they work from home. Credit to Joma Tech. 🤓

The HelloWorld example of JSF 2.2 with Myfaces

I just did by myself create a very simple app "HelloWorld" of JSF 2.2 with a concrete implementation Myfaces that we can use it later on for our further JSF trying out. I attached the source code link at the end part. Just follow these steps below: 1. Create a Maven project in Eclipse (Kepler) with a simple Java web application archetype "maven-archetype-webapp". Maven should be the best choice for managing the dependencies , so far. JSF is a web framework that is the reason why I chose the mentioned archetype for my example. 2. Import dependencies for JSF implementation - Myfaces (v2.2.10) into file pom.xml . The following code that is easy to find from  http://mvnrepository.com/  with key words "myfaces". <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core</groupId> <artifactId>myfaces-api</artifactId> <version>2.2.10</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core<...

Styling Sort Icons Using Font Awesome for Primefaces' Data Table

So far, Primefaces has used image sprites for displaying the sort icons. This leads to a problem if we want to make a different style for these icons; for example, I would make the icon "arrow up" more blurry at the first time the table loading because I want to highlight the icon "arrow down". I found a way that I can replace these icons with Font Awesome icons. We will use "CSS Pseudo-classes" to achieve it. The hardest thing here is that we should handle displaying icons in different cases. There is a case both "arrow up" and "arrow down" showing and other case is only one of these icons is shown. .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s { background-image: none; margin-left: 5px; font-size: 1.1666em; position: relative; } .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s:not(.ui-icon-triangle-1-s)::before { content: "\f106"; font-family: "FontAwesome"; position: ...

A Template for Software Engineering Standards

Software engineering standard template A well-structured standard acts as a blueprint that guides engineers in their daily tasks and long-term goals. Below, I will outline a template for creating a comprehensive software engineering standard. Header The header serves as the document's identifier. It contains the following: Authors : The people who have contributed to the creation of the standard. Created Date : The date when the document was initially created. Version : The version of the standard. It is typically updated with significant changes. Status : The current status of the document, whether it's in draft, in-review, or official. Next Review Date : The date when the standard will be reviewed for relevancy and accuracy. Table of Contents A table of contents provides an overview of what the document contains, making it easier for readers to navigate through the document. Body The body of the standard comprises: Values : The core beliefs that guide the decision-maki...