Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Ruminating on Agile estimates

Over the past few years, we have been using story points for estimation, rather than using man-hours.
For a quick introduction of agile estimation, please peruse the following links that give a good overview.

https://rubygarage.org/blog/how-to-estimate-with-story-points
https://rubygarage.org/blog/how-to-estimate-project-cost
https://rubygarage.org/blog/3-reasons-to-estimate-with-story-points

But still folks struggle to understand the advantages of estimating by story points. During the planning poker session, all team members discuss each story point and arrive at the story points through consensus. Thus each team member has skin in the game and is involved in the estimation process.

The time needed to complete a story point will vary based on a developer’s level of experience, but the amount of work is correctly estimated using story points.

IMHO, velocity should be calculated only after 2-3 sprints. This average velocity (#story-points/sprint) can be used to estimate the calendar timelines for the project.