Overview

Introduction to the mechanics of Agile Estimation Understanding User Stories, Story Points and Velocity See the process of re-estimation after each iteration

How to Estimate
User Stories Story Points Planning Poker Product Backlog Velocity

Re-estimation

User Stories Examples

As a user, I want to search for my customers by their first and last names. As a non-administrative user, I want to modify my own schedules but not the schedules of other users. As a user closing the application, I want to be prompted to save anything that has changed since the last save so that I can preserve useful work and discard erroneous work.

Story Points
Break down user stories to units of relative size
o

So you can compare features Alternative to time

Story Points are not a measurement of duration, but rather a measurement of size/complexity
o

Compared to a baseline All stories are either 1x, 2x, etc larger or smaller than the baseline in size/complexity

Start with one standard feature (a baseline)

o

Since Story Points are a relative size, the actual number of story points assigned are meaningless
o

Different teams will have different baselines, so different points

It is ok to be inaccurate as long as you are consistency inaccurate

Negotiation

Positions v Interests

Buying a House
Seller's Anchor: $1,000,000 Buyer s Anchor: $800,000 Meeting in the middle: $900,000

Planning Poker: Quotes From the Real World

How did you go from a 20 to a 2?? Let s do it again

Do you want me to take the card back?

The second time we are suppose to be closer, not farther apart!

Planning Poker
A consensus driven approach to estimating how many story points for each user story A way to eliminate one dominating personality A way to counter the tendency of meeting in the middle Done with a physical deck of cards or online The entire team plays Play one round, discuss, play one more round

Product Backlog
All user stories are put into a bucket This represents all of the tasks for the project (work items) Backlog will have an item, its estimate (story points), and its priority
o

Remember this estimate is not time based, but point based

Sample Product Backlog

Backlog item Allow a guest to make a reservation As a guest, I want to cancel a reservation. As a guest, I want to change the dates of a reservation. As a hotel employee, I can run RevPAR reports (revenue-per-available-room)

Estimate Priority (Points)

3 5 3 8 High Medium High Low

Improve exception handling

8
7

High
High

Total

50

Sprint 1
Developers will commit to XX story points
o

Warning, they will usually over commit

After the end of sprint 1, you have your first velocity number

Team Velocity
Velocity is the number of story points per iteration completed You calculate velocity to predict how much work to commit to in the next iteration Velocity only works if you estimate your story points consistency Over time you will know: team has a velocity of XX story points per iteration
o

Over time this will self-correct

Over time you will be able to predict the project schedule (and release) based on Velocity and Backlog items

Velocity Charts
True way to see the health of a project

Re-estimation
As you complete more iterations, your velocity will change
o

Velocity changes because of minor inconsistencies in the story point estimates Team velocity will typically stabilize between 3 and 6 iterations

Re-estimation of the entire project happens after each sprint

o
o o o

New Velocity New story points added (OBTW, bugs) and removed (completed) Business owner/product owner reprioritizes the backlog Use the cone of uncertainty!

Summary
Seeing the value of User Stories and Story Points Playing Planning Poker Understanding Team Velocity The value of re-estimation at the end of every iteration