Agile Estimation

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
 Stories and Tasks committed for the Sprint

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
Sprint Planning Meeting

Scrum Master

.... Ok!
?

Product Owner Team

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
Product Owner presents the Backlog
• The Product Owner invites the Team to the first Sprint Planning Meeting, when
enough of the Product Backlog has been broken down into detail

• The Product Owner leads the first part of the meeting where s/he is presenting
one after the next the items of the Product Backlog starting from the top
prioritized ones

• The Team discusses the presented User Stories and makes all the needed
questions to the Product Owner in order to achieve a common and detailed
understanding of what needs to be done

• The Team estimates the Complexity of the User Stories - using the Planning
Poker technique - and around the half of the meeting gives to the Product Owner
an initial commitment

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
Relative Estimation
• Relative Estimation: Instead of estimating absolute size of feature/stories, we
estimate their relative proportion, and than derive the absolute size:

? The glass is about

2/3 of the bottle

• Once we know the size of the glass or of the bottle we can derive the other, for
example:

bottle = 33 cm then the glass = 33 cm * 2/3 = 22 cm

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
The Cone of Uncertainty
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agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
Planning Poker Estimation Sequence
• Planning Poker defines a fixed sequence of numbers

0 1 2 3 5 8 13 20 40 100

+53.8%
+62.5%

+150%
+100%

+100%
+100%

+66%

+60%
+50%

100 150%
75 112.5%
50 75%
25 37.5%
0 0%
0 1 2 3 5 8 13 20 40 100

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
Agile estimation using Planning Poker
› Relative Estimation: Instead of estimating absolute size of feature/stories, we
estimate their relative proportion, and then derive the absolute size:

R #1 It is like
This story story #2
US#1 8 is... Baseline?
US#2 3 3 What5about 8
story #2?
US#3 5
Yes, but
US#4 5 8testing.. 13
2

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
Visual CLUES for estimation

1 2 3 5 8 13

US#8 US#4 US#2 US#3 US#1 US#6

US#5 US#7

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.
Why do we estimate stories?

• To plan a release consisting of multiple sprints

• To help the product owner with prioritizing stories
• To estimate how many stories will fit in an iteration

agile42 | We advise, train and coach companies building software www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2010.