AGILE ESTIMATION

Deepak T Gururaja

WHAT IS ESTIMATION?

a rough calculation of the value, number, quantity, or extent of

something.

a judgment of the worth or character of someone or something

USAGE OVER TIME OF THE

WORD

BEFORE WE START

Let us then do an exercise

A SMALL EXERCISE

Can you arrange these planets in order of their size?

• Mercury

• Venus

• Earth

• Mars

• Jupiter

• Saturn

• Uranus

• Neptune

• Pluto

HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO

ARRANGE?

Did you know their masses?

Did you know their diameters?

Did you know the history of these planets?

How then, were you able to arrange accurately?

WHY ESTIMATE?

Imagine you are getting a house built

You contact a contractor

You explain to him the how you want your new house to look like

You answer any queries that he has

Then, you ask for an __________

CONE OF UNCERTAINTY

GOOD ESTIMATES

Can we have something called a good estimate?

How much can we trust our estimates?

Are estimates for real or just lies?

Are we giving estimates just because our SM will not agree if we

don’t?

Lets look at a small video

ESTIMATES AND

EMPIRICAL PROCESS

The further into the project you go, the lesser the uncertainties

So, why estimate early?

Estimates are a means to trigger conversations

They bring out the wrong assumptions and wrong understandings

ESTIMATES ARE….

Estimates

Not real

Approximations

Guesstimates

Provided only to get the project rolling

ESTIMATES

Estimation of Epics

Estimation of User Stories

Estimation of Tasks

ESTIMATION OF EPICS

Very high level

Large variance is expected

Is only a bucketing mechanism

Helps to differentiate some large epics v/s small epics

Helps to determine what needs to be considered now and what needs

to be considered later

Typical metrics used – T Shirt sizing

ESTIMATING USER STORIES

Little more detailed

More number of buckets

Clearer end goal

Lesser variance expected

Lesser uncertainty

Typical metrics – Story point sizing

TASK ESTIMATE

Detailed

Much lesser variance

More certainty

Done at an individual task level where information is already known

Mostly done at a day level

Recommended metric – Hours or ideal days

HOW TO ESTIMATE

HOW TO ESTIMATE

The exact number of candies in this jar can not be determined by

looking at it, because most of the candies are not visible. The amount

can be estimated by presuming that the portion of the jar that cannot

be seen contains an amount equivalent to the amount contained in the

same volume for the portion that can be seen.