Estimating

Is your team hesitant to estimate? Here's the secret: we're not as bad (or as good!) at estimates …

Pressure for guarantees can ruin agile plans. Learn how to build stakeholder trust with accurate estimates.

Ever wonder why your projects always seem to be late? The reason might surprise you.

Agile teams often struggle to estimate product backlog items. Here are 7 ways to make solid improvements.

Story points are perhaps the most misunderstood topic in agile. Story points are not based on just …

Story points are about time, specifically effort. But that does not mean you should say, “One story …

If you’ve estimated with Planning Poker, you may very well have used cards with either the …

The best plans are created by developers and stakeholders working together.

Estimating product backlog items provides benefits beyond predicting when a project will be finished.

Triangulating estimates happens when teams compare a current estimate against two existing …

Unless team members have discussed it, they are almost certainly providing different types of estimates.

Calculating a cost per story point comes with risks. Here's what you need to know.

We avoid having unfinished work at the end of a sprint, but it sometimes happens. Here’s what to do.

Some teams assign all tasks upfront. Others don’t. Here’s what works best.

Team members often think estimates are only useful for stakeholders and managers. Here’s how they …

Time pressure improves productivity & quality…up to a point. Learn how short iterations and …

Establishing a common baseline allows multiple teams to estimate consistently with story points.

When estimating in story points, teams should think in terms of ranges and rounding up. Here’s why.

How to adjust velocity for holidays and time off.

Succeeding with agile isn’t just about knowing where to start, it’s about knowing where to go …

It’s important for most agile teams to estimate both their product and sprint backlogs. But why?

Even though not everyone may work on a product backlog item, it’s still worth having the full team …

Planning Poker relies on relative estimating, in which the item being estimated is compared to one …

Some teams like story points so much, they invent task points and use those for sprint planning. …

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a five-point story better not go by any other …

I'm occasionally asked about the merits (and whether there are any) of putting an estimate of zero …

Agile teams are told to “embrace change,” which is the subtitle to Kent Beck’s wonderful Extreme …

I've written before that we should only estimate if having the estimate will change someone's …

It is good practice to first write large user stories (commonly known as epics) and then to split …

There are two primary ways for planning a sprint: velocity-driven sprint planning and …

If story points are an estimate of the time (effort) involved in doing something, why not just …

Given enough time, a good agile team can estimate how long a product might take to deliver, even if …

I recommend using Planning Poker on product backlog items rather than on the tasks that make up a …

All of a Scrum team’s members should be present when playing Planning Poker. You may be tempted to …

I recently helped to facilitate a two-day planning session for an important initiative at Adobe …

As much as I value estimating the product backlog, not every team needs to do it. And those who do …

Rather than a conventional review, here is the foreword I was asked to write for this …

In this session we will shatter the myth that agile teams can't plan. We'll start by looking at the …

Many of you work in a dedicated in-house team, but some of you contract with companies for Scrum …

A sprint burndown chart shows only one thing: How much work remains.

I occasionally encounter the use of t-shirt sizes (Small, Medium, Large, or so on) in use as …

Estimating is a way of buying knowledge. If having the additional knowledge will lead to different …

You know that before the development team writes their first line of code, they need a funded …

Too many teams view planning as something to be avoided, and too many organizations view plans as …

Maybe you work for a vendor who must bid for work in response to an RFP. Or perhaps your company …

You’ve probably heard some people say, “Agile teams don’t plan.” Nothing could be further from the …

Maybe you’ve heard about agile software development projects but aren’t sure if they allow for the …

Story points on an agile product backlog represent the effort to implement the backlog item.

Planning is the act of thinking about the future. Sometimes that future holds risk and uncertainty. …

Removing the large values from a deck of Planning Poker cards is like deciding to strike millions …

The topic of how well a team estimates two point stories relative to one point stories (and so on) …

How do we estimate how many hours it will take to deliver a given product backlog if we have no …

Doing performance testing creates some amount of overhead on the team (the tax). This overhead or …

My usual recommendation is to assign points to bug fixing the agile defects. This really achieves …

When we get features that are too small (as good user stories are), it is very difficult to put a …

It would be nearly impossible to remove all dependencies between product backlog items and so our …

This agile estimation blog post from Mike Cohn looks at story points. Learn why user story points …

Remember the difference between an estimate and a commitment and keep the two activities separate, …

Moving away from component teams is a difficult but necessary step for those who want to adopt an …

I'm often asked about the relationship between story points and hours. People who ask are usually …

Some teams may respond to the pressure for their abstract measure of velocity to increase by …

A common criticism of story points is that the meaning of a story point will differ among teams.

Sprint planning meetings typically go into deeper detail than is appropriate for product backlog …

I don't use story points for sprint planning because story points are a useful long-term measure. …

While I want teams to come to agreement, I don't care how heartfelt the agreement is.

When we estimate it is important that we not mix knowledge-before-the-fact with knowledge-after-the-fact.

User stories are a great way to get people talking about requirements. However, there's a reason …

Too much work goes into use cases to not employ them to their full potential. By assigning points …