Sizing EpicsTales from an agile kingdom

The Agile Kingdom

The Quest

The Happy Ending?

The Agile Kingdom

The Agile Kingdom

Once upon a time…

The Agile Kingdom

Product Owner

Vision of Ice and Fire

Vision

RequirementsUser Stories

The whole kingdom…sizes user stories

The Agile Kingdom

0 1/2 1 2 3 5

8 13 20 40 100 ?

ProductBacklog

13

3

2

3

5

Big user story

Big user story

Small USSmall USSmall

US

ScrumTeam

smallsmall sml

Years went by…

The Agile Kingdom

Pricing model Price / story points

0 1/2 1 2 3 5 8 13 20 40 100 ?

equals

Years went by…

The Agile Kingdom

Years went by…

Business owners

Product Owner Scrum Team

The Agile Kingdom

?

The Quest

The brave knights…challenges

The Quest

‘We need to compare in order to size and we don’t have enough epics to compare to’

0 1/2 1 2 3 5

8 13 20 40 100 ?

‘They come in different shapes and formats – some more rich in content than others’

‘We can’t spend too much time deep-diving’

‘Not a flexible scale in Planning Poker’

The brave knights…challenges

The Quest

‘Proportion of Uncertainty is bigger in epics than in user stories’

Epics

Volume

Complexity

Uncertainty

User stories

Volume

Complexity

Uncertainty

The brave knights…recipes

The Quest

Blue Recipe

1. Take epics2. Do planning poker

3, 5, 3, 2, 8, 133. Multiply by scale (10)

30, 50, 30, 20, 80, 130 4. Do one Epic (breakdown and implement)

30 -> 25 5. Adjust size for everything else

25, 42, 25, 17, 67, 108

Green Recipe

1. Take epics2. Choose one epic and breakdown into user stories3. Size the user stories and sum it up

1, 3, 5, 8, 13 = 30 SP4. Divide by scale and make it Reference Epic

÷ 10 -> 3 5. Do Planning Poker

3, 5, 2, 3, 8, 16. Multiply by scale

30, 50, 20, 30, 80, 10

The brave knights…meet the king

The Quest

?

And the epics considered…

The Quest

The Dragon

‘As a king I want to have a dragon so that I could win battles and conquercities.’

The Dire wolf

‘As a king I want to have a dire wolf so that I can protect myself against theenemies.’

The Wall

‘As a king I want to have the Wall so that it will protect thekingdom against the White Walkers.’

Questions set

The Quest

1. User new data capturing? A: Yes/No

2. UI changes to existing screens? A: Yes/No

3. Integration with third parties? A: Yes/No

4. Data migration? A: Yes/No

5. Does it affect internal processes? A: Yes/No

6. Change the database structure? A: Yes/No

7. Is it a re-usable configurable component? A: Yes/No

8. Specific behavior for transactions? A: Yes/No

9. Special performance considerations? A: Yes/No

10.Does it affect common functionality? A: Yes/No

11. Any product specific variations? A: Yes/No

The gathering…sizing epics

The Quest

The Dragon Benchmark 5 points

The Dire Wolf

The Wall

Size 5 points by comparison to The Dragon

Struggle 13 or 20 points by comparison to The Dragon

There is a problem!! Too BIG for the scale!!

The gathering…

The Quest

Inspect

The previous scale and benchmark were too small and needed adjustment

Adapt

The Wall 20 pointsRe-benchmark

The Dragon 8 pointsResize

The Dire Wolf still 5 pointsResize

Therefore the new scale and benchmark

The happy ending?

Turn it into story points…

The happy ending?

Blue Recipe 1. Take epics 2. Do planning poker

3. Multiply by scale

What scale? What is the multiplier?

? 4. Do one Epic (breakdown and implement)5. Adjust size for everything else

No time

Inspect

Turn it into story points…

The happy ending?

Existing backlog epic – The Three-eyed crow

“As a king I want to have a three-eyed crow so that I can have power over nature and prophetic visions.”

The Three-eyed crow Size Trying to introduce Uncertainty

Adapt

3. Choose an epic from the backlog already broken down into recently sized user stories and on the same scale

Final estimates…

The happy ending?

The Three-eyed crow = 5 epic points

The Three-eyed crow in the backlog

30 Story points multiplier of 6

The Dire Wolf = 5 epic points ~ 30 Story points

The Dragon = 8 epic points ~ 48 Story points

The Wall = 20 epic points ~ 120 Story points

~

In the end…

Business owners

Product Owner Scrum Team

The Happy Ending?

visibility

better release planning

And they continued to live happily…

…well…not ever after because each daycame with a new quest for the brave knightsin their so called shinning armors.

The End.

Signed…a Knight in so called shinning armor.

balounge.ro