Slide Deck 6 - Agile Software Estimation Flashcards
What does velocity measure?
The rate of progress
Sums the story points in each iteration
ex: 3 stories of size 5 is velocity of 15 duh
What are some assumptions that are made with ideal time?
the story being estimated is the only thing that is being worked on
everything you need is there before you start
there will be no interruptions
Why or why not is it good idea to assign work based on individual roles?
Do not!
Assigning work increases work needed as well as you then need to track velocity for each individual role player
What is the promise of agile teams?
To reduce uncertainty through small efforts with big gains
What is a large user story called?
Epic
What is a set of related user stories called?
Theme
What are the techniques to deriving an estimate?
Expert Opinion
Analogy
Diaggregation
What is expert opinion?
Intuition or Gut Feeling
Difficult if work requires a variety of skills not performed by one person
What is Analogy?
By comparison
This story is twice the size of a different story, essentially you compare the story against other stories that have already been completed to get the estimate
What is Disaggregation?
Estimates are all within the same order-of-magnitude
What is planning poker?
Iterative approach to estimating
Steps:
1) Each estimator is given a deck of cards, with each card having a value estimate on it
2) Customer/Product Owner reads a story and it’s discussed briefly
3) Each estimator selects a card that’s their estimate
4) Cards are turned over so all can see them
5) Re-estimate until estimates converge
What are some things to remember when doing planning poker?
Consistency using a subset of teams - what one team calls 3 points another team might not
Should do this before the project officially begins and during the 1st iteration, and whenever new stories are identified during an iteration
Why does planning poker work so much?
Brings together multiple expect opinions
Estimators are “called upon by their peers” to justify their estimates
Studies “show” that averaging individual estimates produces better results
it is FUN
Are story points an estimate of size or time?
Size
Time is a function of size
What are some reasons to choose story points over ideal days?
1) Help drives cross-functional behavior - there are people from all disciplines usually there to build the project
2) They do not decay - ideal days could change based on experience with technology, the domain, or the members on the team
3) Pure measure of size - as developers proficiency changes, the ideal days changes. Story points are more abstract and where as ideal days could be misrepresented by actual days
4) Usually faster - discussions are at a higher level
5) My “ideal days” are not your “ideal days” - i.e. a fast runner can do a trail in 5 min while my grandma might take 5 hours
