2p ÷ 0.5e = 4xsimply said:

double productivity in half effort That’s Agile..

Topic: Agile Planning and Estimation

Agenda: Importance of Planning and Planning Levels

Bird’s Eye view of The Agile Lifecycle and Agile Team

Agile Planning and Estimating Principles

Levels of Agile Requirements, Estimating and Sizing Units

Estimation Methods and How to Size points

Complexity Bucket method

Sample and Examples

Agile Planning

“When preparing for battle, I find that Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

6 Planning Levels

The Team is Involved in Planning Steps 4,5,6

The Agile Lifecycle

Ag

ile

Team

Agile Planning & Estimating Principles

Level of Agile Requirements

Estimating

“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

—John Maynard Keynes

Relative vs Absolute Estimating

Relative Estimating focuses on size and complexity - this happens at the story level

Absolute Estimating focuses on ideal time - this happens at the task level

Sizing Units

Story Points A measure of the relative size and complexity of the

story How much effort and how hard is this story compared to

others on our backlog ? Avoids the need (and waste) behind precise estimates

Ideal Time How long will it take if It’s all you work on No one interrupts you And everything you need is available

The ‘Right Method’ for the ‘Right Time’

How to Size Points ?

Estimating Story Points using Complexity Buckets (Elatta Method)

Sample of User Story Estimation table

Work Categorization Categorization can be based on specific needs e.g. Design, Development, Testing, Documentation

or it could be User Interface, Business Logic, Database, Integration, Testing etc.

Keep the Categorization limited to 3 or 4 categories max for speedy calculation

For each category use scale of Light L=1, Medium M=2, High H=3, Complex C=4

Bucket Rounding is to round it to the nearest Fibonacci Bucket number (shown in previous slide)

Story ID Summary

Work Categorization Totald

=a+b+c

Bucket Rounding

e

Story Points=d+e

Designa

Developmentb

Testingc

1 Story Xyz L => 1 M => 2 L => 1 4 -1 3

2 Story Abc (has multiple external integrations) L => 2 M => 2 L => 3 7 +1 8

3 Story Def (minor/cosmetic change) 0 M => 1 L => 1 2 0 2

Sample Release Planning Wall

Example Backlog

References

Mike Cohn’s video on Agile Estimating (available on youtube)

Sally Elatta’s video on Agile Estimating and Planning (available on youtube)

Let’s get started..

Manish AgrawaleManish@gmail.com

eManish