Webinar on Agile Estimation : iZenBridge

© 2013 iZenBridge | CONFIDENTIAL

iZenBridge

Agile Estimation

Saket Bansal , PMP® , PMI-ACP®

iZenBridge Consultancy Private Limited


Agenda

1 • Agile Estimation

2 • Story Points / Ideal Days

3 • Doing Estimation


What Is Estimation?

• Estimation is a prediction of how

long a project will take or how

much it will cost

• Approximate judgment-Oxford

English Dictionary

• A prediction that is most likely to

be true


Estimation Accuracy U

nce

rta

inty

in

Estim

atio

n

Time in Project


Estimation Process

How long / How

much?

Calendar

Days &

Money

How long for an

item ? For one

person ?

Effort

Can we

measure the

software size?

Size

•Use Case

Points

•Function

Points

•Story

Points

•Ideal Days


Traditional Estimation

Size Productivity Effort Project

Dependencies Duration


Agile Estimation

Size Calculation Duration

400 Story Points

20 Velocity 20

Iterations


Planning Onion

Strategy

Portfolio

Product

Release

Iteration

Day

Estimation Release Level

Iteration Level Estimation


Two Levels of Planning

Release / Project (3 to 12 Months)

Estimation for long term plan: High Level

Estimation for given iteration: Detailed in Hours

Iteration 2 to 4 Weeks

Rolling Wave


Estimation at two Levels

# PBI Description Size

1 As a Job Seeker I

can create multiple

profile

3

2 2

3 3

8

13

20

# SPI Description Hrs

1 Determine rules about

who can create multiple

profile.

1

2 Specify acceptance tests

to show how this should

work.

2

3 Design user interface. 1

4 Code user interface. 5

5 Add tables and stored

procedures to database.

6 Automate tests. 4



Agenda





It's about Relative ranking


Story Point

• The “bigness” of a task

• Influenced by

• How hard it is / Complexity

• How much of it there is / Volume of Work

• Risk / Uncertainty

• Points are unit-less

• We can use math


Ideal Days…

• How long something would take if

• It’s all you worked on

• You had no interruptions

• And everything you need is available

• The elapsed time is much longer (Why?)


Ideal Days / Story Points

Story Points Ideal Days

Are typically faster, since we are

doing relative ranking

My ideal days cannot be added to

your ideal days, so it takes time to

estimate

Help drive cross-functional behavior While estimating in ideal days

sometime team start thinking in their

functional boundaries

Difficult to estimate first few stories Ideal days are easier to estimate at

first

Pure measure of size, sometime

difficult to explain outside team

Ideal days are easier to explain

outside the team

Do not decay Start decaying with time

Measurement of size so does not give

direct indicator for efficiency

Force companies to confront time

wasting activities


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Agenda





Doing Estimation

• The Estimation scale should be non

linear

• Frequently used estimation scales

• 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 , 13

• 1, 2, 4, and 8

• We estimate better within one order of

magnitude

• Epics can have range like 20,40 and

100


Estimators with deck of cards

PO Clarifies the story

Each Estimator selects a card

Cards are turned over

Discuss Differences

Agreement Write the estimate

No

Yes

Planning Poker


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Webinar on Agile Estimation : iZenBridge